wintertime sheds the skin of fear
Wexford, January 20, 2019
I sit in bed and listen to a rendition of Brahms' Hungarian Dance. Not of any particular relevance except that I'm trying to set the mood. The cat sits at the bottom of my bed, licks herself every once in a while. I can hear it when I pause the music. I don't understand why she keeps wanting to hang out in my room when I smother her with unwanted affection and she hates me for it. Truly, I do not understand cats.
I'm having one of those introspective days. I think about whether or not I can define this period in my life as one of change, or of growth. I don't know if I can. Sometimes it feels like I am giving away my days and my breaths to time, as if I am perpetually waiting, not fully in one place or the other, with no achievement to speak of. But then, I don't know if my life was meant to be full of creation or achievement, or if it was just meant to be lived.
At the same time, I've decided that I want so much less fear in my life. No fear of the unknown, no fear from looming loneliness, from the romantic soul mate never making his way into my life (I do not believe in one soul mate, but in many, and not all must be in the romantical category), no fear at the prospect of returning to Beirut having gotten no job offer, no American success. No fear at the fact that the florist in me is hibernating, unsure of the time she will awaken. Perhaps in spring. No fear at the thought that the writer, too, hibernates, learns, absorbs all that there is to understand about the world around her. So that one day she may write. No fear at all and everything that has ever controlled my life, controlled my emotions, made me less than what I am. No fear except for those fears that sneak up on me uninvited, those I cannot help, in moments of anxiety, those that I know will soon evaporate, because nothing lasts forever.
I reflect on my age. This year, I will be 30 years old. But I am not afraid of the years, those are but hours, elapsing without end. That they have been labeled as years is a misfortune for those of us who look badly upon aging. I, on the other hand, cannot understand how chunks of life can be framed as such. And how one number can make you change the way your perceive your identity. I will be different at 30 from what I was at 15, no doubt about that. But I am still the same person; the differences in me are unrelated to what two different years in my life were, but to growth, to learning, to seeing life with a clearer vision. I think.
In the end, I think that I've feared age (or the notion of it, as I do not really subscribe to the finite aspect of age numbers; I feel no different at 29 than I did at 25, except that I now write better, maybe and for that, I am grateful) for the single reason that I've always feared going through my twenties without a partner I could marry by the time I was thirty (and way before, even). But I did. My teens and twenties went by (as I've recorded it on this blog innumerable times) without anyone to share them with. Instead, I've shared them with frustration, with solitude, with pain, with the feeling of something that is always missing, something that is always longed for but never attained. I've spent those years living in fear of not understanding just why it didn't happen to me. Exactly why didn't it happen? Why didn't love, or anything masquerading as love happen ever to me? I cannot possibly know.
But the haunting fear of spending those years alone did nothing to diminish the reality that I did spend them alone, and often in silent, torturous longing. The truth is, I may never meet a human being who will give me all the love I've ever wanted, and take from me, in equal exchange, all the love I've always wanted to give. But for however long I've got in this strange and testing existence, I'll always hope, and I'll always dream.
I just won't fear anymore. Whether the outcome of the events that will form my life meets my expectations or not, I will learn to accept it as it comes to me, as I go to it, finding my essence through trials without fear, through explorations without regret. It is a lot easier that way.
I've now got to a-ha's Crying in the Rain. Needless drama is always welcome. Neko sits on the laptop charger's cord and sleeps peacefully, looking eternally adorable. I may not understand cats, but I take comfort in the fact that she likes my taste in music.
I sit in bed and listen to a rendition of Brahms' Hungarian Dance. Not of any particular relevance except that I'm trying to set the mood. The cat sits at the bottom of my bed, licks herself every once in a while. I can hear it when I pause the music. I don't understand why she keeps wanting to hang out in my room when I smother her with unwanted affection and she hates me for it. Truly, I do not understand cats.
I'm having one of those introspective days. I think about whether or not I can define this period in my life as one of change, or of growth. I don't know if I can. Sometimes it feels like I am giving away my days and my breaths to time, as if I am perpetually waiting, not fully in one place or the other, with no achievement to speak of. But then, I don't know if my life was meant to be full of creation or achievement, or if it was just meant to be lived.
At the same time, I've decided that I want so much less fear in my life. No fear of the unknown, no fear from looming loneliness, from the romantic soul mate never making his way into my life (I do not believe in one soul mate, but in many, and not all must be in the romantical category), no fear at the prospect of returning to Beirut having gotten no job offer, no American success. No fear at the fact that the florist in me is hibernating, unsure of the time she will awaken. Perhaps in spring. No fear at the thought that the writer, too, hibernates, learns, absorbs all that there is to understand about the world around her. So that one day she may write. No fear at all and everything that has ever controlled my life, controlled my emotions, made me less than what I am. No fear except for those fears that sneak up on me uninvited, those I cannot help, in moments of anxiety, those that I know will soon evaporate, because nothing lasts forever.
I reflect on my age. This year, I will be 30 years old. But I am not afraid of the years, those are but hours, elapsing without end. That they have been labeled as years is a misfortune for those of us who look badly upon aging. I, on the other hand, cannot understand how chunks of life can be framed as such. And how one number can make you change the way your perceive your identity. I will be different at 30 from what I was at 15, no doubt about that. But I am still the same person; the differences in me are unrelated to what two different years in my life were, but to growth, to learning, to seeing life with a clearer vision. I think.
In the end, I think that I've feared age (or the notion of it, as I do not really subscribe to the finite aspect of age numbers; I feel no different at 29 than I did at 25, except that I now write better, maybe and for that, I am grateful) for the single reason that I've always feared going through my twenties without a partner I could marry by the time I was thirty (and way before, even). But I did. My teens and twenties went by (as I've recorded it on this blog innumerable times) without anyone to share them with. Instead, I've shared them with frustration, with solitude, with pain, with the feeling of something that is always missing, something that is always longed for but never attained. I've spent those years living in fear of not understanding just why it didn't happen to me. Exactly why didn't it happen? Why didn't love, or anything masquerading as love happen ever to me? I cannot possibly know.
But the haunting fear of spending those years alone did nothing to diminish the reality that I did spend them alone, and often in silent, torturous longing. The truth is, I may never meet a human being who will give me all the love I've ever wanted, and take from me, in equal exchange, all the love I've always wanted to give. But for however long I've got in this strange and testing existence, I'll always hope, and I'll always dream.
I just won't fear anymore. Whether the outcome of the events that will form my life meets my expectations or not, I will learn to accept it as it comes to me, as I go to it, finding my essence through trials without fear, through explorations without regret. It is a lot easier that way.
I've now got to a-ha's Crying in the Rain. Needless drama is always welcome. Neko sits on the laptop charger's cord and sleeps peacefully, looking eternally adorable. I may not understand cats, but I take comfort in the fact that she likes my taste in music.
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