Individual Time

I haven't had any time for myself...practically, ever since I came here, but any time to myself for the past two weeks any alone, any quiet time or even any intellectual stimulation has eluded me. It's impossible to scrape five minutes for myself.

I am always around someone, or a group of people, or at work, or at home with either the TV on or the music on, people continually talking, shouting, screaming, vehemently trying to tell their side of the story for the past 3o years, their challenges and the trials of their freedom, the price of their sacrifices. Discussion, disagreements, arguments, everyone vying for their side to be considered the truth, to triumph and to win eventually. My head is about ready to explode. There is so much going on up there, I scantly get the chance to write to express myself. Scratch that, thinking is a big task and it gives me headaches at this point.

Unfortunately there is going to be a big whiplash and or a big emotional bomb to explode when this is over with. There is going to be a great after-storm that will leave me with a lot of personal and family mess to deal with. Things like these are always in two phases. The initial phase of what is going on currently and then the messy emotional phase, after the fact of the actions, consequences of decisions. The second is so much more painful and harder to cope with.


I haven't been able to read, write the way I would like to. For Heaven's Sake, I barely get the chance to sleep. The billion things I do, like vocab, grammar, working through short stories, anthologies, literary devices, criticisms, schools and well a billion other things like, how to write a short story kind of stuff...none of it has been touched. My novels are left stranded on my parents' dinner table, awaiting some sort of affection and understanding from me.


So, when it comes to me doing things for myself, whether it is reading a short story or spending ten minutes on facebook, I refuse to be made to feel guilty and that there was a better way to spend my time, like call or make the time to connect to someone else or other a group of people. If at that moment, that is what I want to do; for example, get on facebook, read a short-story, or write then without having to account my time to anyone else, that is what I should be able to do. All of these restrictions on my time is not something I am used to (other than the ones I create myself) and it gets on my nerves increasingly. I am never alone, and if I do get the chance to do anything, it's like in between two things, like when I am getting a ride, for example to work, if I am picking someone up, or being dropped off or picked up by the car. So if people are going to start comparing saying that I should have called instead of giving myself the ten minutes or the half an hour or the hour I needed to myself instead of sacrificing that some more to keep in touch with others....I am going to be furious. I need some sort of me time to be able to regroup myself.

Some distance and time off does great things to people. I am one of those people. If I act too quickly, right at that moment of my emotional intensity, I say and do things I later regret. Letting me go and letting me do stuff on my own time, on my own terms is the only way I can interact with people as selfish, rude, crude and unbearable that sounds. I've always known that I've been a difficult person. I've never made anything easy on anyone, most importantly on myself. I've probably created way too many obstacles and tormented myself, placing too many arbitrary restrictions on myself when there wasn't the need for one. I have also realized that I've grown to be a very recluse, solitary and quiet loving person. I don't like constant attachments, constant gestures of love, constant repetitions of reaffirming these feelings with words. It strains and suffocates me, as horrid as that sounds. I have a free soul that just likes to roll around in the wind and let the current take me where it will. I used to swim against the current, trying to make the world, life, God, the universe and others bend to my will and get my way with everything. I've given that up now for the past four years. It's too difficult to be constantly swimming against the current. It drains you not only physically but the wear of mental exhaustion is one that cannot be recovered unlike the physical one. You never look at the world the same way again. So here I am, looking at it from an exhausted point of view where the only thing I want to do is to be away from people, society and do my own thing in the four walls of my own sanctuary. I want it so that no one can reach me, cocooned and warm, judging life from the small parameter of my own home much like Emily Dickinson. There hasn't been a time in my life where I wanted to be more alone before.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. Although it is my off day (much to my dismay at this point) but I have to go to another city to help my mom take care of some issues in which we'll take Irem along (so she isn't home by herself all day long). The good thing is that Marie has invited us over for dinner. That I am looking forward to.