Blank screen. West Bend Wisconsin Starbucks. What am I doing here?What if I just woke up and the last thing I remembered was getting on a BEST bus in Bombay my school bag stuffed with smelly gym clothes –navy blue tights and leotards. The smell of jute gym mats and teenage perspiration seeping out into the already saturated early morning Bombay air. No. that's too hard to imagine. I was too different then. Too unsure and shy compared to this married with child 30-something year-old. This new me may be in poe dunk wisconsin, jobless, and with no life to speak of for the moment –can't even drink the winter blues away.
My daily existence, though, is ennervating. This morning I felt like someone under house arrest. I willed myself to develop a routine so I wouldn't just sit in the middle of the living room dumbly staring into the 5 foot high drifts of snow outside. But I feel more solid than ever. I know this will all pass and that I will forge a new life here in WI. The difference between this 30 year old self and the 13 year old is an elemental sense of faith in myself. I know myself and I'm not fighting unknown demons. There is still so much I'm desperate to change about myself but there is now some perspective to my desire and my dissatisfaction. I feel like I have weight in my being so I won't just shrink and disappear into myself in this new solitude I find myself in.
