There are times when you get too comfortable in your life, either with someone or at some place, in a situation or in a state of mind, that you no longer wish to change anything, even if it’s no longer serving you a dime. The universe, always playing a hand though, makes sure to take you to your real calling, somewhere where you are able to unleash your inner strength that was hidden in the comfort of the familiarity of the present.
Some days ago, I had to say goodbye to my home. It’s the place where I was born, raised, started going to school, and learnt about my love for nature, night skies, long walks, and coffee conversations. It’s the place where my sister got married, and my alopecia areata started. It’s the place where I kept myself in lockdown for six months because I didn’t know how to face people now that I had just become bald. It is the place whose terrace bore witness to my tears when I wished to conceal them from others, and where I took deep breaths with my hand on my heart during moments of panic. It’s the place whose patio saw my most beautiful moments of love and laughter with some special people who once came into my life. It’s the place where I played ‘chocolate chocolate’ with my cousins for hours and called my dearest cousin, who lived across from me, for random late-night gossip sessions. It’s the place for which I cannot bear to write, ‘it was the place,’ because it’s always present in my heart.
The moving-out process was sudden, as with every new shift in life. I only had some weeks to pack twenty-seven years of my life in four boxes. Nevertheless, I began to rearrange my life from scratch in my new place.
One afternoon, I decided to go out and explore my new surroundings. I took one hundred fifty rupees with me and bought two chocolate biscuits and sat on one of the swings to take everything in.
My new life is not entirely new. I still go to my same job, I have my family around me, I can still see my cousin and talk nonsense, even my new room has the same lighting that my old room had, and the TV lounge here offers me the exact comfort for watching a popular romcom movie as my old one did.
Maybe moving on is supposed to be like this.
We expect that a sudden loss means all is lost. We believe that moving on requires us to put on a brave face, never look back, cut all ties, block numbers, and undergo a makeover to become a new person. However, the truth about moving on is different.
The reality of restarting life after a deep loss is that you can never completely shed the old you. You just carry on as the same person that you were, but now with new, hopefully better habits. The new surroundings are never entirely new since you aren’t completely different.
Mind you, there will be days when the old person that you were will tell you to go back and maybe just for once, live the old life again, but the new you, now with a braver heart and a broader vision of the world, will stop you from falling back into the comforts of the known and push you to jump into the unknown. The old you will tell you to mourn the loss of good days, and on some blue nights, you will, but the new you will push you to remember the rest of the days which hurt you enough that you used to cry at night and pray to be put out of your misery.
So, what I infer is, eventually, we become an amalgamation of our past and present, and no matter how many new clothes we own, the scent of the old days will always linger.
As this reality sank within me, I sighed with relief because I didn’t want to see an unrecognisable reflection as I stood before the mirror. Although this felt nice, it also meant that I had to carry a heavy feeling in my chest whenever I saw hints of my past reflection in the mirror, which would tug at my heartstrings.
As night fell, I exited the swing to return home.
Saying goodbye is tough; it takes time, patience, and a lot of strength, but eventually we do become better. Maybe today I don’t understand why it was necessary, but sometime later, I will, and the beauty of that time will be that I will have become a better person, woven into the old versions of myself.