a journey to the other side of time

I have been an emotional wreck these past couple of weeks. In a completely unanticipated fashion, D’s imminent start of pre-school has unshackled anxieties and fears I didn’t even know lay buried deep inside my subconscious. A lump of fear has taken up permanent dwelling in my throat. (Like the elephant inside the boa constrictor.) Nothing will make it go away. Except perhaps Time.

Which is why I want to simply fast forward a few days, a few weeks, go to the other side of Time, see that everything is indeed ‘alright’, and come back to this side better able to cope with the ‘uncertainty’ of the present, now ‘knowing’ that everything will work out in the end … Doesn’t it always though? In the end, either things do work out the way we were desperate for them to or we learn to adapt and accept whatever doesn’t turn out in our favour or seek out other alternatives and simply redefine what 'alright' means … So ‘knowing’ that everything will be OK is like ‘knowing’ that the sun rises in the east or that summer will surely end and winter will soon be knocking at our doors whether we like it or not.

But this ‘blind’ belief, no matter how well established by past experiences, provides me absolutely no solace this time … because I have never known worry like this before … (or have I?) Is it merely the nature of a parent’s concern for her child? Or is there something else running much, much deeper than that and has chosen this opportune moment to reveal itself?

Whatever it is, it is making me burst into tears at all hours and in the unlikeliest of places. Tears welled up in my eyes earlier this week at D’s school’s office as I was writing out the cheques for his fees! I didn’t sleep a wink last night and came up with a thousand reasons to send him to that other school and not this one … all reasons that seemed downright absurd in the light of the morning. This afternoon I napped with D and an entire sci-fi movie played out in my head; too bad I don’t remember the details of it … I even recall ‘thinking’ during the dream that I should try and remember it when I wake up so that I can pen down this very interesting story I was waltzing though. I did try to hold on to whatever fragments of the dream revealed themselves to my conscious mind as soon as I woke up but all I am left with is a mere impression of red-and-black images (a silhouette of a house) and the feeling that the story had a tragic but satisfying ending …

It confounds me how quickly I’ve lost (if I ever even had any) all semblance of objectivity and reason in viewing my situation and the world around me. And if I peer at everything through the lens of fear and pessimism, how am I to prevent my anxieties from spilling on to my little one? There is a constant churning in my solar plexus and it is paralysing me in such a way that I’ve been holding my breath without even realising it … I just want this feeling to go away on its own … like a season … like a weekend … without me having to do anything about it …

It all comes back to the most mischievous of fate-twisters … Time … that keeps the future shrouded in secrecy … that constantly wants to prise the halcyon days of the past from my hands and heart only to keep filling them with strange, new stuff … (although I must pay attention to my usual disposition to romanticise the past) and there’s nothing else I know to do in a manner of coping except to sit and write about it and listen to Florence and The Machine and in the process transform all the confusion and fear and anxiety into words, and try to see the poetry and beauty in this mess called Life … perhaps decades later I’ll come back here and read these words and smile at the memories these will evoke then and know at least one thing for certain … that in this moment I love little D with all my heart and I am doing all I can to not let my worries sneak into his subconscious and taint his blithe spirit, and I can only hope that is enough for him even if it isn't for me …