This may be too soon, but I want to write it anyway. It has been 56 hours since I left my job, and 36 since P and T left. And all the love people must feel for me is already poring on me in form of worries, molded as questions.
Are you alright?
Are you going to live alone?
You know good things will happen, right?
What do you do all day?
Yes.
Yes, unless someone I love needs a room.
Yes.
So many things. Though it has been only 3 days, I do, in parts, activities that I absolutely love doing. Activities that are at the bottom of to-do lists, that never make it to be done on a day of 10 hours of “work”. I read over-indulgently. I clean random corners of the house, blowing off dust. I don’t press all buttons when I enter the room. I learn which switch works what. Mindfully. I fix postcards that hung tilted, at 30-degree angles since last month. I send letters to people, that I intended to send 3 months ago. I listen to Cole Porter on the balcony. I buy fruits and salads. I cut them, mindfully. And eat them too, mindfully. Yesterday, I cleared my bedside table, so now my book has a place to rest when I sleep. I finally washed the door mat. I watched an old movie. In the evening, I sat at the window and admired the sunlight and what of it stays on my wall. And it has only been 3 days!
Soon, I will start all the photo walks I intend to go on, and join the theatre groups I want to join. In August, I will only wear skirts and shorts. I will make good tea for myself, run every day, write, make photos and treat my body well. I will study things I want to study, and document things in painstaking detail, just as I like to. I will paint and stitch and dance and sing:
“The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
And day’s night today”
But every once in a while, I will stop to search for words to explain to the world the difference between lonely and solitary. That I chose solitude, that it was not forced on me, I will explain to them, in the words I pick, mindfully.