another year...

i'm debating if i ought to catch up or just start from right here right now. either way i have had a lot of time to reflect on things. since i've started to work out of home reducing my hours just enough to stay within part time wage, house gets awfully quiet around this time of the day with no one to barge in on me,giving me plenty of time to do just that. the battles that had me raging on my head seem to disintegrate little by little. i allow things to roll off my back more easily now,something i have been struggling to do for a long time..
so contrary to all the hype, absolutely no new year resolutions, no goals to achieve, no dreams to manifest, just boldly taking life one day at a time..



"there are only two ways to live your life. one is as though nothing is a miracle.the other is as though everything is a miracle" Einstein said that.

play along

sometimes the people you care about the most can also bring out the worst in you. case in point,my parents. just when you think things are getting be a little quaint, here they go at it again. they argue over everything. silly things like who gets to watch what's on tv or even who gets to talk to me first when i call can make them go insane. and did i mention the bickering? i can pick up on the resentment in my mother's voice thousand miles away. whatever she does nowadays is never good enough for my father and i'm not sure if she will ever measure up in his eyes period. so the slightest thing can set him off & there's always plenty to whine about. all i can do is listen while they vent. the speaker option helps too.

since she has tolerated beyond her share of anguish over the years, she doesn't feel the need to go out of her way just to make him happy anymore. from where she's sitting, he hasn't really redeemed himself. he has done pretty outrageous things through the years making us all go down with him. now that i think about it, it's a wonder he didn't land in jail much less getting beaten and lay in a ditch somewhere. as anonymous as i can roam on the periphery of my own blog, i still cant get myself to write about some of the things he's done. not out of respect for him but for her. so as sad it is, i see her point but her timing seems way off.

the irony is, with him losing his memory in a gradual phase, he doesn't remember all that much. unless you talk to him about something, he may be able to piece some events here & there but not cohesive enough to carry on a conversation. i dont mind repeating myself every 2 minutes or not take it personally when he can't come up with my childrens' names. i know enough to play along not to make him feel offended.after all what good can come out of going over things he doesn't even remember committing? this is what she's up against. she's going up against a shell of a man deemed with a horrible past and who never stood the chance at redemption. now what good can come out of that? not something i want to be in the middle of.

what if..

this isn't a substantial post of any kind..rather just something i've been thinking about.

ask any kid they'll tell you birthdays are fun. may be not so much, if you ask a grown up. i'm on that boat.forget the crap about the older you get the wiser you become. for me the idea of getting older is quite the unsettling kind much less becoming any wiser. would you be around for that many years again? may be i'm being too much of a cynic right now :)

the mother in me..

they've grown up so much. in such a little time. so much so i can't remember how quickly time has flown by like a minute. so many memories flood my mind. as any other mom, i worry. i worry if i've had done enough, i worry if i'm doing enough and i worry if i'd ever do enough. you know the motherly responsibilities. with so many aspirations to stand up to, it's a daunting task to say the least. will i ever be good enough and fill up the mold ? i have no idea. all i can do is to keep on loving them every way possible & more.

i hope you dance..

and..this is for them.. it brings tears to my eyes every time..

the male ego..

somewhere in the next few days my mother's taking some time off being couped up with daily chores in the house all day, leaving on a small vacation for a couple of days. she's been looking forward to this for months now and made preparations well ahead of time around the house.so every thing's in place. unbeknownst to me, the situation has stirred some drama in the house. as fragile as he is, my father still wants to run things around the house & doesn't want her to go. the exact reasons are kind of grainy, because he gives a different one every day, he's insinuating about crossing some unseen boundaries. now this cracks me up. ah ..the pathetic male ego! so i had to cut in to diffuse the situation, as usual. the fact that i live thousand miles apart is immaterial, i almost feel like they are in my house fighting in the other room. sometimes i have to play both roles of good & bad cop. not to overwhelm him, i downplayed the whole thing and made him see she needs the break more than anything. reluctantly he muttered something under his breath and i took it as a grunted approval. not that i needed his approval to begin with but i didn't want to hurt his feelings either.

not being the problem solver anymore is probably hitting him hard now that he's no longer able to get around as he used to. not being able to validate the his value as the caretaker in the relationship is probably eating him up inside too. if only he could see the insecurities in him. looking in from outside, i get all that . but is it fair to the other person? sometimes men get so caught up with their egoism they discount the value & strength of the other person in the relationship/marriage and miss the mark completely.
man..what is it with the male ego? what an interesting breed :)

the other part..

according to most of our friends & family, how my husband & i met, is something predestined and a great love story in itself. maybe they are just a little prejudiced. we were very young, it was a little before my fifteenth b'day when a mutual friend introduced us at another friends'b'day party (sounds so cliche,but true) . he was only a year and a half older than me. so you do the math. well..at fifteen years old (or 14 if you want to be politically correct), you don't even know who you are much less about real love.but you love feeling butterflies in your stomach and get all giddy and mistake the sensation for love. been there,done that. the charming personality he possessed capable of winning anyone over was an added bonus. somehow he never really impressed me all that much.besides the initial attraction, there wasn't a whole lot to hold on to. as naive as i was then, i figured that much early. does it really matter at 15? you know the answer.
funny how early i started making up excuses for things that doesn't resonate with. looking back i can dissect it into million ways today.but i was only 15 & it wasn't like i was going to get married to him. well, little did i know! we hung out a little bit whenever i could lie and get away from my parents strict supervision radar. benefit movie screenings for school fundraisers, fairs, b'day parties and going shopping with friends were my usual sugarcoated lies. most of them worked,it gave such a rush every time. it was all fun but short lived. about 6 or 7 months into our puppy love, the overseas scholarship he'd been waiting for came through and he left the country within a matter of weeks. as heartbroken as i was, my walls were way up and pretended i was fine. so we were resorted to go out our separate ways & we both moved on. that was the end of our part one.

the part two didn't start until i was about 20 or so when i heard from him again. he'd just come back & found out where i worked and called me at work one day.sure, it took me by surprise but we had lots of mutual friends by then and one of them could have easily passed on my work number. he then showed up at work the week after. i was working at a large public venue just outside colombo. i was used to running into people i know on a daily basis , so running into him at work was not really a big deal.at least it wasn't to me. he said he came with a friend and we stuck up a brief conversation ,an awkward one to say the least. i was trying to be polite and looking for getaway excuse. what do you say to an ex boyfriend you haven't seen over 5 years? it struck me as odd, too much to be a coincidence, but i brushed it off. i had completely gotten over him and had no idea what was in store for me.

over the next weeks he picked up the pace and started calling me often. my home number hadn't changed since the last time, and sometimes he'd call me at home as well. he seemed like a completely different person from last time around. for the better, of course. we caught up on the gaps we missed out on,laughed over stuff from our past and made fun of each other. reminiscing sounded fun.we both shared the same sick sense of humor and i eased out on my self developed defenses and let him in. so i decided to give it another go when he'd finally brought up the subject. when people ask me what made it happen the second time around, i say i felt secured & safe with him. and that was the truth. may be it was the comfort of already knowing part of him. like when you know you are safe with someone, you just feel it instinctively. that gut feeling. i think as women we tend to seek security in a relationship and sometimes the actual state of being loved can easily get overlooked. it doesn't seem as important. that's the only way i know how to interpret what led me. coming from a somewhat dysfunctional family (to put it mildly), feeling secured was way more fulfilling than anything.i wanted that sense of security.it all made sense. so what if we don't agree on a few things and he can come off a little controlling or even condescending? or like when he tells me its black when i know its white. so what if we fight over stuff so much when its all done and over with, we don't even remember what we were arguing about in the first place. so what if he makes me feel a little inferior at times? my family history validates it, right? you can look & search until your eyes hurt but we all know there's no perfect relationship out there. every relationship is flawed, it's how you make it work that counts, everything's going to be okay, i kept telling myself.

to fast forward the story, he met my parents a while later & we got married when i was 23. here we are now, years later. still riding out the storms. seemingly endless at that. when someone tells me how rare to have found your life partner when you were fifteen, i give them an acknowledging smile and thank them politely. when you're married, it is expected. you've got to keep your dirt behind closed doors,under lock and all.

but what i don't tell them is that i met the only love of my life,who i rarely talk about, gave him up during the 5 year lapse between these parts of one & two. my biggest regret to date, which covers my real story - the other part. only if they knew......

forgiven....

when i was little, there were a lot of things going on in my family that i really didn't understand. no matter how much i would try, i just couldn't wrap my little head around it. sometimes i would ask my sister but being just an year older than me, she was often just as clueless. when i finally became old enough to understand the reality of the situation, i despised everything i found out. i wanted no part of it, just wanted everything to go back to normal like our neighbours around us. not an easy thing to do when you grow up in a small urban town where people like to be in everyone else's business. i remember the stares we would get when we walk up the street to get on the school bus.funny how i could read people just by a casual stare directed at you. something i'm still remarkably good at even now. i digress. more than anything i despised him. i was angry that he didn't care what it would mean to us. why couldn't he be like our friends fathers who were just normal and devoted? but there were a few times i would just soften up & feel bad for him too , because somewhere in the back of head i knew the whole situation was killing him inside and it couldnt be easy to have everyone else judge you.

over the years i learnt a lot & even have gotten around to forgive him for everything. i don't mean to be heartless when i say this but..although he's sick today, he probably has it easier than any three of us because he can't remember most, if not all of it. he's being showing signs of Alzheimer's, a common form of Dementia which he was diagnosed soon after the stroke.
it's like when you patch up a messy wall with some soothing wallpaper to cover the dirt,but you always know what's behind it but glad that wallpaper is masking it anyway . today i'm worried sick about him. when my cell goes off late at night, my heart jumps every time, fearing the worst.or i would just suddenly wake up middle of the night thinking i heard the phone ring when it hadn't.

well i guess that's just how life works. as much as you'd like, it doesn't come with a manual. you learn as you go along,picking up pieces. more than anything, i have learnt that when people we love make choices, we don't always understand them. their actions may hurt us but we can go on loving them just the same. it isn't a matter of comprehension. it's forgiveness. it's simply that.

half of my heart

what i'm listening to these days..if you listen carefully you will be able to read between the lines, an amazing song from a guy i'm not too crazy about personally.but the guy's got some real talent in him. gotta give credit.