October 16, 2024
Two days after I returned to Singapore the helper we had found for my mother quit. My sister didn’t tell me until the weekend was over, so I spent the weekend trying to recover from the sense of not knowing who I was and trying to find my way back to my life and dreams.
I walked in the hill park, trained, sketched, read, though I couldn’t find myself back into the writing space yet. That is still all a jumble, and I guess it requires a slowing down or a change in the way I do and view things.
On Monday when my sister told me the helper quit any sense of feeling that this trip had been worthwhile disappeared, and I fell down a rabbit hole of anger and fear that shook apart any wholeness I had achieved over the weekend of doing things I thought would return me to myself.
You think things will go one way but they have their own agenda. I know in writing this sentence I reveal a lack of control or agency.
For two days my sister reverted to the person she had been before I had gone, the one I would constantly be in a war with. Our calls ended with a sense of tension. But I think the trip had shifted something for me —I could step back from my own thoughts and reactions and try to step into her shoes, and through the day I found myself calling her back at odd times to say this or that and it made such a difference.
I am in limbo. But where else would I be?
I dreamt of being on a boat between places. I didn’t know where I had embarked and where I would be getting off. It is what I call a transition dream but normally I am on airplanes or at airports, or on trains and train stations, in these dreams. Being on a boat is different.
It has the sense of slowness, the sense of luxury, as also a sense of intense fear — after all slaves were transported in the holds of boats in the most disgusting conditions from Africa to America and there was nothing slow, luxurious, or enjoyable about that. People died or were blinded or permanently maimed on these journeys.
Part of me thinks that I should go back to Bombay. My mind is there anyway and no amount of trying to relax here is working anymore. At least I’ll be useful there.
There is another part though that still feels I need to be here. Not sure why. That this is not the time to be there. Not sure why.
I do need to plan a longer trip to settle things in Bombay but first I need to settle things within me. Things that have felt unsettled since the year began. These are not material things, or visible events, but things internal that when so off true north put me in a state of unbearable unease.
This self-examination, this seeing who I am in this world where I disagree with more things than I agree with is intensely needed. I need to have a map of myself again.
If what I am writing is not making sense, then it simply means that I haven’t been able to explain it to myself well enough and so cannot express it well on paper. Maybe understanding and expression will evolve as time moves on.
💚
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