looking back

Somehow life never seems to become real for me until i have articulated it, told its story, in words. My thoughts and feelings don't become real until i have put them in words; no, it goes further than that, i am unaware of how i think and feel unless i've articulated myself in writing or speech. Sometimes i think that perhaps it is writing that enables the thinking, not the other way round.
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Is that why the events of the last two months never quite took shape in my mind, never assumed any greater meaning for me; is that why things felt so formless, so ambiguous; is that why i felt suspended in a constant state of vague confusion and uncertainty -- because i had no one to talk to, because i stopped praying and journalling? Is that why things turned out the way they did -- because i was just living from moment to moment, unable to find a way to reflect on what was going on and what i was doing, not even putting into words what was going on for myself, with no sounding board against which i could measure my own responses or think about what was happening and where things were going?
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Living in a house with 16 undergrads, next to the constant clamour of the kitchen, the drone of the washer and dryer, the chatter from the living room -- there was no quiet, no space; the furniture was basic if not ugly; everything felt so transient, so temporary, so in flux -- like we were all just passing through, as indeed we were.
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i need space; quiet; beauty; to feel safe and held by people i know and love; and to write my life in words -- and i didn't even know i needed these things till it was far too late, and the lack had taken its toll. If i had known earlier, i would have sought them out elsewhere; gone for long walks at the GTU or in the Berkeley hills; made sure i continued journalling every day even with my housemates clattering in the kitchen way past 11pm, cooking dinner and talking at the top of their voices on their iPhones and iPads to their relatives halfway across the world. i would have called my friends in Singapore and asked them to make time to talk with me. Instead, i ended up unmoored -- living on the surface of things so that even the silences were shallow and unrooted, so that i couldn't even manage to take a measure of how i felt about things as events jumped from one to the next, while i just kept on smiling and smiling, trying to keep up.
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Well, now i know. i suppose, as long as there is life, there will be new opportunities to apply the lessons learned, however painfully, in the past. Need to get more beauty in my life; need to make time each day to be quiet, to pray, to write; need to reach out more to my friends and stop being so afraid to impose on their time that i dare not even ask if they can spare some for me. And i can start today. Each day is a new day -- something i remember telling my students once, to much derision from a colleague who was so angry with what they had done that he couldn't see past the damage -- but it is true: each day is a new day, and as long as there is a new day, there is a chance, however slim, however tenuous, to start anew.
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