FB Blog Past - 6

For those newly following my writing, this was something I posted a while back on FB.  Just to start I'm adding this, and a few others, here also.  For those who are on FB with me, you don't have to read this, most likely you've see it already and therefore you will fall asleep once you've read the first sentence. 

Note:  This blog does not really reflect the new turn that my blogs will be taking, a more desi prospective of living in the USA.  Then again, not all my future blogs will do that consistantly.  Anyhow, enjoy : )

October 12, 2012

When I first watched the Movie “Sabrina” one certain scene stuck to me like glue.  It was when she was in Paris and her mentor tells her that she shouldn’t be afraid of being alone and that ‘I met myself in Paris’.  That got me thinking about the concept: comfortable being alone.  Now keeping in mind this was years ago and I’ve steadily thought about it since then.

So what does it really mean, meeting oneself?  Is there an assumption that you left yourself behind?  Or may be that you didn’t know you were missing and now you’re running around looking?  Did you make plans to get together somewhere?  Or did you sort of stumble onto yourself and said ‘oh there you are!’  Admittedly these were all childish questions that I asked myself back then but in many ways I was precisely that, a child.  Growing up in a very protective cocoon surrounded by an uber protective family, extended family and community, I didn’t have any concept of what ‘to be alone’ was and therefore the need to find myself was never an issue. 

I was never left alone long enough to have thoughts about myself and when I did contemplate what I truly wanted to do with life, in life, I knew I wouldn’t have heard a round of applause and cheers coming from my loved ones.  Why bother then?  I mean I just wasn’t brave enough for those fights nor was I self assured enough to think that may be, just may be, what I wanted was better than what they all wanted for me?  I was happy to live in complacency basically (and ignorance).  After that came marriage and responsibility.  So, meeting myself?  What was that?

Then years later, I’m with a very dear friend and I question her about her rather solitary life and she looks at me and said ‘I used to be really uncomfortable about being alone, now I’m okay, I’ve understood myself’.  Hmm…what an interesting thought and yet I still didn’t have the time to delve into it for long since I still was quite surrounded. 

I don’t think in my life I would have had much time to think on these lines, the idea of finding, meeting, and understanding self.  But then out of the blue I was left abandoned.  Sounds more dramatic then it was.  At my prior job I was surrounded by a bunch of lovely people who were my everyday.  I saw and spent more time with these folks than even P.  Sharing the banal details of the day to day grind with them, always knowing I had a lunch date, crying to them, complaining to them, these things became natural.  And I’m sure many of you have that one person (or may be more than one) who you find comfort in and true friendship with at your work place.  I couldn’t imagine life without their presence but as the story always goes, good things must come to an end, as that too did.  One day they were gone.  Well not in like one giant poof or there was some sort of mass exodus but yea, slowly they went on to bigger and better things leaving me to wave goodbye.  Basically ‘and then there was one’.

I recall sitting in my office feeling sad and pathetic not to mention quite friendless.  I would see others leaving in groups, laughing and talking excitedly heading for the elevators around lunch time while I avoided eye contact and tried to look busy.  I would skulk up to the cafeteria, grab some food and hasten back to my office to eat in quiet solitude.  I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it epically sucked.  After a few weeks of this nonsense I decided that I could no long hide from seeing the outside world and eventually put on my big-girl panties to venture out…alone. 

The first few times it was uncomfortable and I was horribly self conscious making sure that I looked occupied as I sat staring resolutely at my phone.  Soon thereafter I became a bit more confident and started to do a lot of internal musing.  Sitting at a bar at some restaurant with no one gives a person plenty of time to mull over existence and even face a few demons.  More of self reflecting opportunity was presented to me when I was laid off and had nothing but hours and hours in a day to myself while it seemed to me the whole world was working.

I can’t say I have answered all the tough questions in life about myself during this solitude, nor that I feel as if some radical changes need to be made (well okay a few have been made but I don’t want to get into that here, after all something’s are far too personal to share even in a ridiculously long blog like status update).  Neither can I say that I’ve met myself totally but here’s a fact, I’m okay with being alone, I don’t shudder at the thought any longer, I enjoy the solitude now and I feel as if I am no longer dependant on anyone.  Not bad huh?

Moral of this story:  If you want to grab lunch sometimes…give me a call ; )