Remind me...

I wonder why it is so easy to lose yourself in the doldrums of everyday life when you've spent so many years trying to put a label on who you are.

Somehow, we never take advice we definitely should; we stick our heads out to defend ourselves exactly when we shouldn't; and always forget the person we can be, right when we need to be that person the most.

I guess that's why it's good to be home. Because it all comes back to you as you shift your gaze from the uber-cool collage of yore to the fridge magnets you gifted your parents, to the picture frame your best friend gave you.

And you know... Who you are, who you can be and who you want to be...

The Living Playhouse

We attach a certain hipness to some things we love, develop an inexplicable fondness for most and harbour a silly longing for their permanence in our life. And in a moment, it all turns to hurt when you try to move away from any of them.

It is warm, strange and sad, all at the same time, that a song fills you with an aching memory, a crowded room fills you with an empty hollowness and the sights & sounds of the past slowly attach themselves to every piece of your changing life. Your world turns into a living playhouse of forgotten images, fading emotions and distant sounds.

And as much as you want to walk out of it at that moment, you just can’t...

And it makes me wonder...

I still shy away from calling myself a woman; partly because it’s an embarrassment to womanhood and partly because I’m still struggling to come to terms with the phenomenon that is womanhood.

I’ve known so many girls - girls I loved, some that I hated and a few I never noticed. And as I fish out a handful of memories from the past, I find them giggling with abandon, running wildly against the wind, screaming at the top of their voices and desperately pretending to be important.

And yet somehow mysteriously, subtly and yet suddenly, the giggling has transformed into an assuring smile, the run has given way to a gait, the screams have turned into silent discontentment and the pretensions have become overwhelming real. The deeper you scratch the surface, the more you realize they’re all pretty much the same – unconstrained, naive, compassionate, protective and petrified.

And the girls you loved, hated or never noticed have become women you always looked up to.