A week in the woods

   That entire week felt like being lost in the woods. That's how it was being around him - like exploring territory half-known that in reality I had no idea what was hiding in it among the trees. It was a new experience to be around someone like this and being free to touch them. It was new to sleep so deeply next to someone else.

  Yes, forest is the right word to describe what my life feels like in this period of time. I feel lost in the woods, sometimes I can't make out the stars in the sky. It's not just the man on whose side I slept. If only it were a one-dimensional thing. But the woods can spread either way around you, thick with greenery that shuts out the noise and sounds of beyond and soon you hear nothing else except for the sounds of the forest itself. 

  I feel like a spider, not in the ability to weave but rather in having many legs. One is placed firmly in the place I live at the moment, the other in the country I'm supposed to move to in a matter of days. For a job I hate in a country I dislike, all for the sake of buying out my freedom in a year from now. Or rather a shot at freedom. 

  There's another country, to the west, and in it there's a village, and in an old house on the outer side of the village lives a man and I both wish and dread being there with him. In my gut I know it's too early, I know we're not even ready for ourselves, let alone each other. 

  And there's a fourth country, I don't know which it is yet, but another where I could run away and be whoever whenever. In every place I feel a stranger, in passing, not quite material enough. I thought of woods and I figured perhaps, in a year from now, it would be nice to move to a quieter place for some time - for a few months, maybe a year. Not a vacation but a journey in a way.

  More than a week, I hate single weeks, they are never quite enough.

Like water and wind

 The smallest things can trigger the realisation of just how much you've changed: a meeting that in the past you would have thought would send you into a possible down-ward spiral, a business venture that proved to be a waste of time, an act that fell into nothing, a ticket bought. Instead you take a moment to acknowledge that things did not go as desired or that what you thought would in some way touch you and yet it didn't and that is alright too. You realise that you're moving further from the person that you used to be and that perhaps you're healing and that shows in unsuspecting moments. 

  You realise you're ready to go too. For the first time in perhaps ever, you're ready to drop it all and really go. Not to escape but because there's hardly anything worth your time here so much so that you will step back from moving on. I look at my body a lot these days. I follow its lines. I realise it's the only home I've really got. 

  I make a mental note to call my family often. I've become aware of our time being limited as the days go by. If we argue on the phone I wonder whether I would want that to be our last conversation. I call them back. I have a certain guilt towards them, the more I grow the more I become a ghost in their lives but that's because for years I became a ghost in my life too. Learning to be present in my life means ringing them up more often than I used to. It means showing them they're in my thoughts more than I used to express in the past.

  I have not given up on people though it is true that I have resigned from them. When they ring me up I enjoy their company though I seek it much less. I feel like I am getting to know myself in ways I did not know I would choose to in the past. Solitude is necessary for that and company is useful some times, in the right ways. It's difficult to place your boundaries and after a life-time of not honouring them now you have to do it in absolute ways that for some don't make any sense. That's alright too so long as you accept the consequences and make your choices and honour them too.

  At times you will feel shapeless like water or wind, but determined nonetheless, full of possible force. You will accept and come to admire that too. You will lose hope, spread yourself thin and gather your self back into one. 

  It's alright for that to happen many times too.