Passerà

My best friend Mandy is going off to Europe next week for a holiday. Funnily enough, I have been covering my tracks since her itinerary was drawn up, making sure no opportunities for drama can occur. Yes - recall the last time she went on holiday in February of last year, innocently thinking that all will be fine and well while she's away. Only to come home to a right mess of a best pal.

And that's how unhappiness is: it doesn't really come without a warning. It brews but you ignore. It screams but you shut it down. Until it comes right at you, and catches you in what you think is a state of unawares. But hell, you can't really blame it when you've been living in a state of denial.

It used to be easy to know how to tell when someone you're close to is unhappy. They'll cry, they'll sulk. Some may even skunk around a little bit. But as we grow older, we shut these reactions down. Perhaps it's cos we've sang the song "Pack all your troubles in your old knit bag and smile, smile, smile" too many times it manifests itself as actions.

Which is why one of the phrases I am always telling my best mates is this : No matter what you do, I'm the one you call when you need someone to come get you off this end of the bar. Cos at the end of the day, when you're swallowed up whole by that big bad emotion, there really isn't any place for the 3Rs - Recrimination, Reprimand and Rebuke.

And whether you're the cause of it, a party to it or an innocent collateral damage - there's really nothing much else to do except breathe. 

Passerà - it will pass.

Tradition and Change

It has been a tradition of mine, to take time out and reflect just before I supposedly become a year wiser. And in my reflection, it has always been asking my parents if I have made them proud.

Perhaps I have always carried this chip on my shoulder. And in the last couple of years, I have deluded myself into thinking the chip away. Alas, delusions are what they are - a mirage that you will yourself to have fixated in your head. All it takes is a strong gusty wind to come and clear the fog away. And what you see, is not what you want to see. What you feel is not what you wished you felt.

I am quite done asking that question this year. Year in, year out - the answer remains the same. Year in, year out - I have chosen not to acknowledge that it is the WRONG question to be asking.

For I know now, pride has no place in this unbalanced equation. How can there be pride when there is hardly any existence?! Or acceptance?!

So this year, tradition changes. I will cease to ask. I will cease to work towards achieving the answer that I had hoped for. I will cease to ask the question.

I will cease.

Perhaps when I cease, it will hurt less, or not at all, the crystal clear fact that you allow me to be insulted and leave me standing out in the rain, to bear the insult by myself. Telling me in not so many words that I am not worth defending. That the fact that it is your blood that runs through my veins, doesn't matter. 

Perhaps when I cease, I will be able to tolerate my rightful place in the history of our culture. That I am worthless, a negative number in your books - regardless of what else the rest of the world thinks of me and what I can do.

Yes, I shall cease.

Crappers

I would like, for now, to know someone with a vacation home somewhere far, far away, indeed of some major long-term house-sitting.

What was suppose to be a time of joy, quiet anticipation, jubilation and celebration is now a time worse than sitting shiva.

As I told Mandy - I feel like I'm just surrounded by folks, waiting in line with a knife, dagger, machete.. waiting for their turn to have a right-go at me.

I am exhausted. Exhausted to the point that I have nothing more to give.

Exhausted to the point that if the only surprise on Saturday morning was that my life was only 34 years and 364 days long - I would gladly go YEAY.

This and That

I've been thinking all day (and all night) how to make sense of all this. Of the fact that for a good hour, you talked and I did not even want to look at you (though some may say "Well Done Barbsie!") Of how I was on the verge of walking to the door, opening it and saying "Please leave and don't ever come back!" Of how I waited and waited and waited for the stabbing pain right in the pit of your tummy to hit, and it never did.

I was told last night that my BFFs were not Mandy and Alex. But trust and commitment, with disappointment and risk trailing behind. And how we're gonna work through them, one at a time but eventually we're gonna returned me whole and healed.

I laugh now as I recall that. I laugh still at how you disregard my warning - many have come before you and tried and they have walked away, failed.

Oh dear God. How did I come a full circle? Right back where we left off - where we worked so hard to stay away from. Do we say then now that nothing's changed? Do we say we've tried, and it didn't work and perhaps this is rightfully where we're meant to be?

So many questions in my head, and yours. So many said out-loud in the open, in the still of the night. With it, so many answers I am trying to squash in my head - silence them back into the deep dark recesses of my mind.

Yet, try as I may, there's one that just won't. And not because it's the one that I need to hear, dark and twisted that I am right now. But it's the one that I'm gonna put down and lock forever in my virtual metal box. Cos it's the only one that's gonna keep screaming louder and louder and louder until I break it down. And this one - I do not want to break down.

You're still here cos you chose to.

If only I can believe it myself.

Branches

I'm not great at remembering facts and details of history. But I believe way back then, before the days of advertisement and all, the way of getting new business was to do your existing one as best as you can, so that the experience would create publicity for you. Of course, with the evolution of learning and marketing, it's now given a nice name of word-of-mouth marketing or the acronym WOMBAT.

As I go into the last mile of this journey (27 working days to go!!), I am taking a moment to reflect, the positioning of the business and how we can create additional value.

I am thankful that it has given me glimpses over the last 48 hours, to remind me of the value-chain that once existed purely only in my head. And what has happened in the last 48 hours? Nothing very much save for:

1. A potential that I did not manage to convert, now seeking Irish business partners in his field
2. A new customer passing on a new lead to follow up

Ben said the other day that we may educated in the Western world and operate in the Western world, but we'd do far better if we incorporated some of the principles of business that the Eastern world inculcates.

And yes, I'd like to think that this is what I am doing, we are doing. And what we will continue to do.

Even if it means I work a full day, across 2 different timezones, just to nurture and water this tree as its branches sprout.

Every Breath

I told mum yesterday evening that one of the things that I will do if I go a nice bonus this year was to change her living room.

The house they live in is in dire need of a sprucing. The walls needs painting (which perhaps we may put off until the youngest comes goes past the crayon-hand-wall stage), the furniture needs changing (the sofa is so sunken it's no longer comfy for my cat-nap) and the walls needs expanding (seriously?! a 20x60 feet house is not meant to hold 4 adults and 6 children). Let's not even go into the dining table that has legs that moves on its own - not hocus-pocus here. Just wee humans pushing the table to get off their chairs and not the other way around.

I have often sat on one of those sunken seats and ID-ed the place in my head. And it's nothing fancy really. A L-shaped sofa so that when folks come round to speak to dad, there's a proper setting to talk in. Some shelving with pull-out containers for the children's toys. A tall shelve with doors so hold mum's cookbooks and the odd bottle of brandy (which is used for the Christmas cake, not for my consumption!). My electone with its broken keys and pedals would have to go and so does the musking-tape patch work cabinet.

It doesn't sound like many items but yet they would amount to some 4-digit receipt. And honestly, if I get a bonus this year (which Ben tells me I should not be hopeful for seeing how things are going - bad divorce, remember?), these things would be right at the top of my list. Not my new mobile phone (yes, a decision has been made on model). Not the oven for my kitchen. Not even a new pair of trainers for my workouts.

I have been to houses of the parents of my friends. And their living rooms screams that life, at this golden era, is all about them. It holds nick-knacks from their travels, it boasts of rosewood furnishings that aren't afraid of pudgy crayon-wielding fingers, it glitters and it shines from the glass cabinets and such.

Mum says it doesn't need to be on my bonus-wishlist. That she's alright with the state things are. And that she knows it will happen with God's blessing. My folks aren't complaining. I know it is a joy for them to see the lil space packed with strewn toys and laughter from their off-springs.

Perhaps I am losing myself - forgetting that to have a living room to call their own, and having it filled with love and family, is more important that Wedgewood china displays.

I suppose then every breath we draw, every second of everyday is a already a blessing, eh?

Forgotten and Blurred

Yesterday marked the final 2 months of this long and winding road that I have been on. I must admit - off-late, it had become to feel more like a walk with a stubborn mule, than a stroll towards the end of this rainbow.

I have ceased looking forward to 1st October with any joy or excitement. I could not muster the buzz than Ben felt and still feels. It had come to a point of thinking that it was a bargain that I had struck with the Devil (though I think that if that was the case, it wouldn't be this difficult a journey!)

As I sit here and force myself to acknowledge the ugly truth before I go to work, I am trying to remember words I wrote 2 years ago, when it was just pain and frustration. I am forcing myself to reconcile to the fact(s) that I had definitely lost sight of what is good and real.

I had let arrogance, greed and envy (AGE) overcome me and those are not the list of things that I want to be counting as my traits. As a person. As a Christian. As one who follows the path that was written even before I was born.

I had let the feeling of smallness of parking my lil WiNK mobile alongside the Beamers, the Mercs and the SUVs, get to me. I had let the shame of a rented 940 sq ft in the sky hung so heavy on my shoulders it has made me stoop so low I am almost face-to-face with the dirt of the earth. I had let the gluttony of lunching at the best places in my building fill me to the limit, there was no more space left for clarity and humility.

"I have lived out of suitcases and airports, I have power-lunched with head honchos, I have railed and banged my fair share of conference tables and I have signed enough documents. None of them brought me the sense of fulfillment I sought. I am currently doing the ONE thing that I am passionate about. As a wise bread man once said – there is nothing to be envious about when it comes to tones of emails to reply, phone calls to return or mountains of paperwork to tackle. It’s not the amount of time I spend in the office, or the amount of walking I do. Yet each minute I spend at it, might change someone’s future just that little bit. And no amount of frequent flyer miles can bring about that."

I used to pride myself of my ability to walk the mile in someone else's shoes. But in the midst of everything, I had allowed AGE to think that it was my own two hands that brought about these results. I now stand at this journey marker, humble and contrite, and say that I am wrong to have thought so. And I apologise.

I may have had a long arduous climb towards getting here, but the truth is this: I did not do it by myself. All these that has happened before me, and all that will happen from here on out - it is given to me indeed on a silver platter. And again, I apologise.

Two months. Much to do. Much to clear. Much to create. 

But more importantly, much to keep close at heart, mind and soul.