upward gaze, uplifted burdens, unbridled hope.i wonder why i always find fault with family. my family. the way things are run, the things we don't share, the words that are [un]spoken... am i supposed to? it may just be simple things like toothpaste or chocolate. what's the point of hiding it? you know next time when i keep a house, i will stock it well with snacks and nice beautiful yummy nice smelling stuff that everyone can use and admire and love. people like cherie and gerry inspire me to be like that i think, because they are always offering, always generous. actually i think it was a good thing that during my teenage growing up years [sounds like traumatic adrian mole ;)] i grew apart from my family. well, not exactly apart, but not in sync as well. i was an anomaly, i was silent in the house [because i refused to add to the clamour and arguing and well, bitching.] and when you are silent in a mess, you tend to be dragged in as a conversation topic, and that i hated. i wonder if i hold scars inside me, but i don't think so, i did. but not anymore. it dissolved when i found flowing life, healing love elsewhere, particularly from God. and woh woh. perhaps i am giving a distorted picture. my family's fine, but not perfect. not downright horrible, not hellhouse!
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everything is flowing in and out of my mind now; i was nine or ten, and got selected for the swimming selections, but i had a mild fever, and my parents refused to let me go for the try outs. i don't know how things would ever be like if i did, if i could, better or worse, and i will never know. but i felt cheated at that time, robbed of my chance, my hobby, stopped from shining, like jewels in a drain, potential run waste. i was nine!
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i was twelve, my friends were coming over to play :) i went out to wait for them, my friend lived two blocks away, in the same condo. but i did not find her, so i went off to her church which was just opposite our condo where i knew she was before she came, and she was not there either. i waited at the bus-stop. But she did not come. so when i finally headed home, she was there already, with another friend. my mom dragged me into the back study room, and i got caned. for not keeping my promise not to cross the road, but i never remembered making any such promise. i emerged in the living room and ate porridge quietly with my two friends, tear-stained and trembling. It was the quietest meal i ever had.
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as soon as i found wings i flew out. i picked things up; i went to friends' homes regularly, watched how other parents interacted with their kids in car-rides, and formed my own values if i saw that those were good. for example, in future i will give my kid's friends lifts to wherever, i will speak to them when im driving, i will laugh and joke, i will invite them to stay for dinner, i will ask how their day at school was, i will tell them about my day. All of the above are not practised in my home, nor in my car-rides. and that is why i say i developed apart from family.
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i dont know why i'm writing about these now, except that i read somewhere that when hurts are brought out into the open, healing emanates. i think it is a form of casting, of throwing out the dirty water as far out as possible, so that it flows away and does not ferment, fester and stagnate on the inside.
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the past two weeks have been.. memorable. significant. a milestone. after losing the papers, being angry and afraid, finding grace from the elders, finding strength from my friends and hope from God, being discontent, feeling unimportant, and now leaving the boys behind, i can finally breathe.
so let what is closed remain closed, and what is dead dead.
the living have business unfinished,
and shall not for past memory fade,
nor for withering chance, wait.
