LIFE
Resolutions And Reconciliations
Because time is precious, what do you intend to do with yours?
Resolutions. Solutions. Evolutions.
If 2022 had worked out according to my original plan, I would be living in Milan, Italy, married and sipping Merlot somewhere overlooking the Mediterranean. I would have had a garden wedding in July, walked down the aisle in a bareback lace dress with my long hair flowing to the waist, entering a new chapter beside a man who is six feet three inches tall next to my five feet three inches frame. It would have been a five-day wedding.
At the eleventh hour leading to 2022, I developed cold feet and realized I was not ready for everything I had described above.
I needed time, I needed time, I needed time.
Now mind you, it’s not because I was indecisive. On the contrary. At every single check point in my life, I am known to know what I want, and what I don’t.
Everything about the man, the plan and the future was incredible. But this, is where real life and reel life are different. It’s never the same as portrayed as in the movies. Most women would be thinking, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
There isn’t anything wrong with me.
I simply realized I needed more time. For me.
Too often we’re misled into thinking the end of the rainbow ends with marriage, family and all the white picket fences and frosted trimmings. It is always assumed with marriage everything will fall into place, you’ve someone to fall back onto, and all the ritualistic song and dance we’ve heard before.
What if I didn’t want to reach the end of the rainbow just yet? Why do I need to be heading towards the end of the rainbow? Why can’t I enjoy where I am while looking at a fantastic view around me?
I looked at my life at that point of time and saw a few things that needed housekeeping. No, I was not having a mental breakdown. No, I was not doubting the love. No, I was not questioning marriage. No, I was not finding excuses to escape or dreading to be a wife. I would never do such a thing.
Instead, I saw — and still see — how precious a marriage is. It would be an honor to be the wife I was proposed to be — at the right time.
But this would be my second marriage. I wanted to do what’s best as opposed to how wrong it was the first time around.
In my first marriage, I was hardly at home with my family. I traveled extensively, lived abroad for a bit, and I had missed out on many important occasions including my brother’s wedding. I sacrificed a career I loved and slowly but eventually, lost my identity along the way. By the time I got divorced, I couldn’t recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror.
I fought often with my parents, came back only where there was an emergency. When my marriage was over, I found myself alone, lost and searching for a sanctuary because I had disconnected myself so successfully with my family thinking my husband was all I needed.
It was a slow process of healing starting with myself as I battled through alcohol, anxiety and depression. I was angry for many, many years. Each time I got up, I was made cripple again with a relationship that was not built to last.
Emerging from COVID-19 lockdown, so much happened and my folks are now in their 70s. They’re in the high risk category and I remember being extremely careful exposing myself going out because I didn’t want to make them more vulnerable. When they had COVID, I was at home to look after them. Being at home and enduring those long days of corona uncertainty, I finally learned how to converse with them without triggering, offending, and misunderstanding.
I saw how supportive my father was when I told him I wanted to take a career break and focus on my health, set up my own business, and manage more quality sleep. I spent my hours a day with my mother getting to know her fears, anxieties and joys. I started asking the right questions.
The three of us would sit at the balcony and enjoy coffee in the mornings and tea in the evenings. When my mother had her moments of anxiety, instead of asking what’s wrong now?, I asked her how can I do better to help?
Instead of being frustrated with my father for the way he liked to interrogate me for everything that I do, I understood that that was his habit from his legal training to ask questions in order to avoid misconstruction of facts, not to find fault.
I stopped assuming. I started understanding.
And when it came to the last few months leading to my departure, I did the same thing with my brothers and sister-in-laws.
Dynamics shifted. We realized that so much of what we knew and thought about each other were based on childhood moments deeply rooted in selective memories. We had stopped evolving two decades back.
We knew why my brother divorced his wife but we never asked him why he and her were better off as friends. We celebrated my sister-in-law getting pregnant after nine years of trying, but we never asked her how it felt to experience and endure three miscarriages. We knew my sister suffered with my brother’s infidelity but we never asked what it took to reconcile and how it is giving the marriage another try.
And then there is me. It took a few conversations for me to realize that my family had missed me tremendously in the last three decades of my life. They saw me work, achieve success, chase after my dreams but I was too busy to allow them to catch a moment with me to ask how I was doing.
All those time I felt alone and thought I lacked sanctuary, I was actually oblivious to the fact that they wanted badly to be a part of my life.
One afternoon as I went to the money changer with my father to prepare for my impending departure, I asked my father to sit and enjoy a coffee with me at a nearby cafe. We were alone and my father asked if I was happy with the future that lay before me.
Before I could answer, my father added, “No matter how successful or wealthy a man is and can promise you the best, know that for as long as I am alive, I can and will always provide for you as your father. When your heart was broken before and we saw you through your pain and struggles, even though you tried hard to hide them from us, we felt them too. We don’t want you to experience that again. For as long as your mother and I are alive, we don’t want anyone to hurt you, or treat you less of what you deserve. We may not be perfect, but we will never, ever allow you to be hurt by anyone. You deserve to live your life the way you want it. And the last few years, it is our joy waking up seeing you happy, smiling, dancing and singing in our house. I know we can’t keep you forever, but know that it was wonderful getting to know you and having you with us again. We may not say this often enough, but we are proud of who you are, what you’ve become and your fighting spirit to overcome your challenges. You don’t have to do it alone. You have us, and don’t push us away again.”
I realized then, that I needed more time not to be a wife, but to be a daughter and a sister.
Marriage can wait for now. Family is different. And my parents, with all my grandparents gone, they’re all I have left. Eventually, I will lose them too to the realities of life.
Marriage can wait. A man who loves me for me, would be there too. Time is what we have for now. With the hands circling the clock, I don’t intend to spend hours and days writing out resolutions. I intend to use them for reconciliation.
And that is all I have written in my journal for 2023 Resolutions: Reconciliation.
