Packing a life and mind

   Packing is in itself a weird thing to do. Half a day goes by and the majority of your life is either in boxes or in a trash bag. The finalization of the date brought about a mixture of emotions - I cried a lot both for what I'm leaving behind but also for the realisation that with some very few exceptions that's not really a lot. Three decades of a life in one place and what is left? A pile of diaries, some books and three people that will miss you. As I started saying my goodbyes I realised that by the time I come back even that handful of people might not be around to see my return. I will exist either in small parenthesis for them or through my absence, my inability to be present. 

  "Sorry I wasn't there," the text wrote and I looked at the screen and it made me sad even further for when could he be present really? I realised I was angry at being sad, I am admittedly growing more and needy of his presence. Or perhaps I realise that that it's not quite enough as I want in my life. I think of my self as a luke-warm person but the more time passes I understand that I'm more "my way or the high way": whenever I try to be ok with the lukewarm thing that exists in the middle it's usually not nearly enough. I feel lonely enough by myself, there's no need for the supplement of other people.

  I might sound unreasonable: in fact I do realise all the things that are going on in the lives of others and too often I use them as the excuse for not getting what I want. The trouble is that I'm neither getting what I want nor making my peace with it, instead going back and forwards between two emotions, feeling guilty and anxious at all times. The problem does not lie with the people themselves, it lies withing me: there used to be people and things here that were important enough to make it easier to stay. At some point those things became so few that I chose to go because they were not fulfilling enough: I feel guilty for leave the few good behind but they can not make up for the mental struggle of this place.

  And I feel the same for many of my relationships: guilty that I do not feel fulfilled by them enough when in truth some times a situation is not enough to fulfill us. How do you know when to stick it out? Knowing I am not great at communication makes everything feel even more like my fault. To control one's own mind is the greatest asset but rather than control I strive to understand. I want to be absolute sure when I say that something is not enough and also that something is, in fact, enough, that it's not "settling".

  I always longed to be free from the restraints of my mind and this new move seems to be challenging what is and is not a restraint. I'm not living the kind of life I wished nor have I grown into the person I wanted - but perhaps this restraint can be the changing factor of what and where and I do things.

  I am unsure.

  I have cried and whined a lot these days - enough that I am tired of my own voice. I have also managed to push myself enough to go out some more, perhaps seize the day here while there is a day still to be seized. I am lost within my head and I write very little - a bad sign always, writing and working with my hands is what keeps me sane. I am scared. Scared of all the things I am likely to fail to do, all the situations I fear I will get stuck into.

  I don't know if I'm changing or not.

  I have been smoking a bit these days.

Past for future

   I don't write all this much these days - the space in my house is crammed and so is my schedule and, to be honest, so is my head. Everything is brimming with things all the time: they are like bubbles, in their enclosure there's almost always just air but when they're present it seems impossible, unimaginable even to try to remove them. 

  Departure looms like a ghost over everything and there's not much to be done about it - the race against time was there before hand but now you can trick your mind that you see a finish line. It's a sensation I had buried in the past and though I welcome it back into my life I dread that I won't be able to handle it as well, 

  You should learn to leave for the right reasons - the first time I had attempted to leave it was in a very safe mode, planned out and stuff and in truth I was running away from myself. I was aware of this too. Now I'm running away from the mess I have made in this country (and the mess they made of me) and the country itself. There are bleak days ahead, staying here is like having a choke-hold around your mind. There are moments when you're used to it but often it drives you into despair.

  A friend briefly returning from abroad explains how flat her emotions are in her new home of a few years, how people here feel everything so much more, the sparks are more present here than there - perhaps it's due to our culture, so open among all things, and our tendency towards tragedy but also due to the fact that we are, after all, also children of this land: where you grow it never leaves you, every little thing has a different way in your mother-tongue. And there are things that you can not find as easily when you leave home.

  But the problem is, she says, that the same environment that presents her with an explosion of emotions almost always propels her into despair: all the people here are drowning, the conversations, as stimulating as they might be, at some point inevitably head south into bleak visions of present and future. Our land can give you some of the things that you desire: but more often than not you will pay a heavy price for them, your health and mental stability among the sacrificed. 

  I have been thinking a lot about the connection of space and memory and growth. In the future I would like to be able to work on the land that my grandfather worked on, to preserve something of the past. As my relatives perish one after the other, so does the memory of the family. There are stories that have never reached my ears that die out with every passing year.

  I have been thinking about it a lot as I am preparing to leave for a new country: by leaving I am sacrificing the chance to understand the past in order to build a semblance of a future.