Dear December,
It is easier to explain why you no longer fit into your clothes: you may have grown tall or gotten fat, or the clothes may have shrunk in the wash. But when you no longer fit into a certain place, or a certain group, you recognize it as such but cannot easily point out why. There are times when I am struck with certainty that it is time to go and look for some place else. And in these moments, I can also be quite certain that I will be burning all the bridges home, may it be an exaggeration or not. But such confidence runs dry when it is time to list all of my reasons. And perhaps it is carelessness in my part that I resort to ridiculous notions of:
no one cares about you anyway;
no one wants you around anymore;
the circumstances are too difficult and it may just break you.
But then I have also realized that perhaps feeling like you no longer belong may just be because you have outgrown the place and the people, just like how easy it is to outgrow your clothes. Perhaps, due to some significant cause, you have grown or turned into someone that may be drastically different from the person you once were or from the person that everyone can recognize. Or, you may have re-discovered a part in you that you’ve lost, and now, in an environment that has made you forget or has prevented you in the first place, you try to rekindle and nurture that part again, but in vain.
We expect people to remain as they are, especially when we like them for being a certain way. And the same is expected of us. The people who have always known us - may it be our parents, our childhood friends, the nosy distant relative - expect us to remain the same, but often, we cannot. The pressure to live up to such an expectation make us stay in a place or stay with people that may no longer suit us. And to stay feels like regressing and throwing away whatever progress we have made with ourselves.
I have not yet taken the first step towards the next place (and admittedly, I don’t even know where that is). But I keep reminding myself to be still and to listen, and to be patient while waiting for the right time to go and as I gather the courage to fully embrace the person I am and have become.
with love,
abelink