I woke up happy. Not literally. I woke up anxious, as I do. It has to do with Serotonin, Dopamine & sleep I think. But I was happy all of yesterday and most of today too. There are little butterflies in my stomach that form & dissolve as they rise, like bubbles almost, from the surprise of the pleasantness I feel. It calms. I blush at its acknowledgment. I say I woke up like this because literally, nothing changed about my life that could have brought this change; except for acceptance, I think, of sinking in of facts, of allowing things to be.
I was struggling with homelessness between two homes, I was “normatively” lonely. But yesterday I decided to stay. Now I suddenly belong, roots and all. I laughed when papa fixed the soup-maker, I giggle at being offered food for the 6th time in 3 hours and am amazed at the sheer availability of food and enthusiasm. Who makes grapes if you don’t go to the market to buy them, walk them home and bathe them? I think they must have to appear magically.
I notice I have started talking like baby R. She addresses herself as ‘she’ now.
“Give her some grapes please”
“She needs to do potty”
“don’t talk to her like that”
I think it helps to want things as someone else. I like the privilege of driving a bad average giving car. I like being there to calm mum down like only I can, during one of her, scratch that, neurotic episodes. I like picking papa up if he has a flat tire. I like to sit with Dadi and follow an odd TV show. I like it when she reads her favorite Whatsapp messages to me over and over.
I suddenly have this blob of empty mental space in my skull. It’s green that turns blue, and glows. It’s squishy like all things should be. I was earlier using it to do laundry, pay wifi bills, and buy dahi to go with the vegetables the house-help made bland. Now, I do an online class by Judy Bloom in that tiny space, I write love emails. I have come to discover a lost bit of my self-worth in it. I learned to hate an ex there, oh how liberating that feels S and I agreed. I made a list of my favorite moments of this month. Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes in the bioscope of life I am trying to build but have trouble imagining.