And back.

I’ve been back home for about a month now, give or take a few more days. I’ve been putting off writing about it because frankly I’ve been putting off  the act of writing for a while now. I have somehow slipped into this state where I keep on questioning what I want and don’t want, although I somehow suspect that a part of me has already made choices and now I am just afraid to face them.

Living alone for quite some time has taught me many things about myself, and I welcome this knowledge without hesitation. It’s something I’ve been wanting to arrive at for years now, that stage of self-discovery where I’m surprised to find that I am not who I thought I was, or at least, who I’ve pegged myself to be while I was growing up.

So far, my biggest revelation has been that I’m okay. That’s it. I’m okay! It took me twenty two years to get this.

It’s a mixture of fear and disappointment, to know that I’m actually doing fine, despite the depression, despite the shitty things in my life, despite plans not happening, and people leaving me, and not knowing exactly what happens now. I’m okay. I’m actually surviving my one hell of a life!

I still feel new and uncertain whenever I think about it. Sometimes I get really scared. I’m okay. What the hell do I do with my life now? Will all the drama be less significant? Will I turn into an optimist, a cheerful bastard that I love to hate? Will I be less of myself?

I’ve always thought of myself as a whole body with compartments. My heart, for example, has four. Before A, the compartments were designated for three things only: my inner child, my inner ‘artist’, and my melancholy. That other one is just empty, and has been that way for eighteen years. When I met A, the empty compartment was filled with – dare I say it? – happiness. When he left, that compartment wasn’t emptied out. It was only filled with more loneliness. And that’s how I’ve been living for the past few years. I wasn’t unbalanced. Just miserable. And it was acceptable.

Until I realized lately that that small boudoir must’ve been redesigned and repainted with an overall finish of okay. And I’m actually functioning. Living. Not just going through the motions. Not breathing, just a little, and calling it a life – as Mary Oliver put it. I know I’m bad at metaphors, but that’s how I am now. I am actually okay. There are tinges, here and there. But I’m fine.

So what now? I don’t know. But I’m smiling. I think, for the first time in a long time, my heart is finally trying to heal itself.