It's been a three year++ hiatus but what the hey, my kids are occupied Netflixing their brains out on school holidays, I've smashed out breakfast and laundry, and got some down time to sit and muse on life.
The last time I posted, it was some weird consideration about mortality, childrearing and lost love triggered by watching Toy Story 4 followed by the lyrics to Landslide. Cryptic as that was, I have to give props to Kye of 2019 for almost being prescient.
I haven't done much in the way of illustrating personal information on this blog since college days (oh good ol' college days), but I think there are some personal reflections I can make here especially since we are approaching the end of 2022, to one of the most momentous years in my life, and certainly the most momentous in the past decade for me.
Without giving too much away, suffice it to say my life now has taken a vastly different trajectory than the one I had anticipated or planned in 2019. I got a divorce, relocated myself and children to Melbourne for 15 months for a full-time laboratory position the midst of a pandemic, started therapy, truly did the single mothering thing and even attempted to find love on apps (!!! failed miserably), gave up on love in general, then realized I had fallen in love with an old friend with whom a rekindled friendship began from work emails, confessed how I felt to said old friend, then waited patiently for two weeks for him to figure out he felt the same way, got engaged a month later, got married 4 months later, resigned from my job and relocated to live with my husband in the US.
So indeed, there was a landslide happening in my life and perhaps in 2019 I was starting to hear some of the early rumblings.
I somehow had a feeling even then, being fairly unhappy with many things, that there had to be more to life than just trying to survive the day, then repeat. There were always fleeting moments of excitement when a fun job came around, fleeting moments of joy when hanging out and having a karaoke and coffee session with girlfriends or sisters, and of course the sustained joy and contentment I experienced being a mother to my two favorite humans...but there was something clearly missing in my life. I had begun to think it was a problem of lack of purpose, that I didn't know what I want to do or be until I died, and that brought about a huge amount of anxiety and self-disgust. But what I didn't realize then was that the biggest thing missing was the kind of love and happy marriage I used to fantasize about as a child, that I convinced myself was just a pipe dream.
It took some major internal overhaul, equally a big renovation in the structures of the life I knew... and the hardest part that I still have to learn to cope with is no longer spending most of my time as a full-time mom since the boys don't live with me anymore, but Alhamdulillah, whatever shape that vacancy I felt in my life and in my heart is now warmly occupied by a very special man who I believe is one of God's greatest mercy to me.
This new life trajectory is obviously a work in progress for me, and we're operating on several uncertainties and contingency plans. But if the worst of the pandemic in 2020-2021 has taught me anything, is that we can plan whatever we want, what God wills will be. What else the years ahead have in store, I can't say I have felt any tremors or rumblings of things to come. For now I trust God has willed that I experience living life as a happily married woman, and for that I am sufficiently grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment