On Solitude: Untitled (8)
‘Your eyes.’ He looked into my eye and as if to proclaim the final decision in a court. ‘Brown.’ ‘What? That can’t be right.’ I thought to myself. I was never a brown-eyed girl.
Things were unbearable for a while, but I wasn’t sure what.
Varisara Dhauti is a cleansing technique in which you drink a lot of salty lukewarm water while doing some asanas until the water cleans out your stomach and comes out the other way. It is said to be practised under supervision, but I felt like I needed to clean out something so bad, so I did it anyway. Then I fasted for a day. Then the tears came out. And that was the cleansing I was looking for. Then I had food.
He asked me if I ever have craving for meat. It was never like one of those things you have to make a decision or a resolution about it. It just happened naturally as if your body has already chosen for you. He was smoking and drinking from the other side of the continent and I got to see it, and everything seemed to be very far away from me mentally and geographically.
‘You abuse the ones who love you… You abuse the ones who won’t…’ The woman kept singing over and over again.
But it’s never the same as feeling alone. Being completely with yourself isn’t always so easy. It’s not something you get to do better every day. It’s more like nature where there are ebbs and wanes. We’re never good at being with ourselves because we’re born with conflicts since the day we realize we need to stand on our own feet. Inside versus the outside world. Inside versus the inside world. And it’s never easy to resolve conflicts. That’s why we’re spending most of our time not to be with ourselves completely. And thanks to technology, we don’t. Things were unbearable for a while, so there must be some conflicts, but I wasn’t sure what.
As the custom was flipping through my passport, I waited for a while, but he kept flipping pages. Then I saw him raised his eyebrows. Then finally his fingers stopped and on page thirty-nine he found a space for the entry stamp. It was almost midnight and it wasn’t a good time to arrive in India alone, but I felt like I had won the first battle with the Indians. Then the next step is to get to my hostel bed alive.
The ultimate conflict a man can have is whether to live or not. Once you’ve decided which status you want to be today, the rest of the conflicts seem minor and resolvable. Then life carries on until the day you decide otherwise.
Things were unbearable for a while, but I remember how much I want to live, so the rest of it got easier.
Sometimes life is extremely unpackable.
Again and again, each time I underestimate the impact life events have on me. I see it as a small road bump that I’m just going to slide through, yet most of the time, life feels like a strong current that I need to fight my way to the other side. And sometimes I get lost inside.
Whenever life becomes unpackable, I crave doing the mundane life stuff, such as sorting out the recyclables, cleaning the gaps between the tiles, or simply putting things back in their places. But this is no longer my home to clean. This is no longer my space to put things back in their places. I’ve moved on. So I blow-dried her hair, just like how I would like someone to blow-dry my hair when I was 12. She asked me when I come back next time. I said I don’t know, realizing that’s the cruelest answer you can give to such a question.
I almost forgot how friendly and helpful the Taiwanese are. Today someone spent 15 minutes calling customer service just to help me get a SIM card. I felt like an outsider not knowing how to get a number in my own country. I mean, it was really complicated. I watched him dedicate his time and attention so as not to leave me stranded with my problem. I wondered where we got all these good hearts on this island. I returned as a daughter, auntie, and sister. Roles I haven’t played for a long while.
Happiness lies in-between chaos and order. Happiness lies in transition.
I realized I hadn’t been completely alone for a very long time. For a time like this, Jeff Buckley always comes to the rescue. Lover, you should’ve come over.
Dad has stopped driving due to poorer eyesight and old age. This is the man I have associated with driving since I can remember. Where driving is one of the few topics we would talk about. When driving is all he does. Every Saturday morning working like a Swiss clock, he would drive me to my dance classroom. How I pride myself on having his driving habits, neat and careful.
“Dad, I’m here. I can drive you two around.”
I tried to be as stoic as I could when I said that.
“At some point, you just gonna choose.”
There is nothing better than talking about the sense of belonging with a random stranger at a party.
“At some point, you just gonna choose where to stay, who to be with. You don’t fall into a place called the sense of belonging. You decide it for yourself. You build it for yourself.”
I’ve decided that I don’t want to fly anywhere to see anyone. I don’t want to cry at the airport. I don’t want to be told “Call me if you want to kill yourself” anymore. I want the accumulation of ordinary moments. Mundane, repetitive. So ordinary that the only fight we would have is where should we put the washer. But then it wouldn’t be a fight because this person standing before me is more important than arranging the furniture.
Where to live is the wrong question to ask. What kind of qualities and values I want to put into my life is the right question to ask. Based on this question, you can operate within this world not being confined with time and space but rather the fullness of life. You still need to be able to feel a certain degree of hurt. That means you are still able to be vulnerable and soft. That’s when love and connection are possible.
