I am in a phase of transitioning. I don’t mean just getting use to the change in lifestyle from city to rural from my relocation. I meant literally everything that I have known in my life. Growing up in a fast pace country like Singapore, I was raised to be efficient and productive. I was conditioned to always be doing something, to be useful, to prove my worth. As a child, I have had to work hard for attention and affections from my parents. They were both running a business and I was often left alone. Being love as I was, just the way I am was out of the question. To get any words of affirmation or praise, I needed to excel in my grades, to do something wonderful. But alas, I’m not one of those child prodigy. I have my quirks, and I am stubborn. I was often compared to my cousins or someone’s child who is doing so great. My poor Mother had no idea how she put me down and was the main reason why it feels so challenging now for me to just be and do nothing. I had no idea how I was raised had such a great impact on my self-esteem.
I wanted to get out of Singapore to live a different lifestyle, to get out of the rat race, to actually enjoy living life and have space to savour life’s little moments. I realised now that I have more work to do on myself than just taking me out of my home country. I am a Capricorn Rising, I work hard and am down to earth ambitious. I have found myself relentlessly creating events I want to be a part of, but I constantly find myself having to comfort myself when things doesn’t turn out the way I expected. They say the only way one can learn is by living it. So here I am, humbled by life, and my own silly expectations of myself to keep doing, keep going, and not give up. I know, change is hard, growing pains are inevitable. But I am not just growing. I am rediscovering who I am. All my woundings from my childhood are surfacing for me to deal with. I am also transitioning into perimenopause. They say it is like we are turning into teenagers all over again, with untamed hormones all over the place, creating extreme mood swings. Yes, that is me right now. Navigating perimenopause and learning how to reparent myself at the same time.
I know I will get there someday. Waking up and say fuck it. I’m going to do nothing today, and I look forward to that day. Right now, I just have so much I want to do, so much I wanna accomplish, but so little patience and time to do it all. Recently, someone whom I met in the early days of relocation had passed away unexpectedly. She was a kind soul, always so helpful to answer my questions and helped me to pet sit when we had to go away. It was a shock to learn of her death, and also a stark awakening to myself. It could be me very soon, and I find myself asking, what else do I wanna do now before it’s too late. A lecturer once told me, I can sleep when I die. That stayed with me. So on sleepless nights, my mind wonders what else could I be doing now that I am still alive?
I have a sense that we will all have to make peace with our woundings in this lifetime before we passed away. I believe it to be so, and it is in a way necessary so that we don’t have to repeat the same lessons all over again. I want to make peace with all my childhood woundings and learn my lessons that I am meant to in this lifetime before I die. Every conscious effort taken to be mindful of what is rising for me to heal is welcomed, even if it means I will sit down in tears all of a sudden just by reading a simple post that touched all those nerves I never knew existed. Getting raw and vulnerable is something I am learning to embrace for myself in this phase of my life, and I am grateful that I have sounds to tide me through this journey of life.
