Too crowded...

Sometimes I feel bad for mom, for the way I make her feel. Like today. It’s a sunny, sleepy Sunday the kind when no one has any work, no plans for the day and no desire to do anything constructive either. And she is (as she often is) in a chatty mood and wants me to hang around with her, hang around in the kitchen, sit on the counter and talk to her about this, that and the other. And I am (as I often am), not the mood.

It is a fact that as I have lamented often, in spite of having a very large house and a fairly non-intrusive set of parents I feel very claustrophobic at times. I mean, its fantastic to have parents and siblings and a dog – it gives such a feeling of being cared for, of being part of a close-knit family (never mind the generation gap and the temper tantrums and disagreements) and keeps you grounded and sane…but like anything else an excess of this togetherness gets to you. Or it gets to me at least.

Today is one of those days when all I wanna do is blare music (which I am doing), not see or talk to anyone which I don’t have the luxury of - what with everyone plus the maid being at home and it being as much a family-Sunday as a family-Sunday can be. I wanna be by myself and clean the room – rearrange the books and CDs, clean out my cupboard and throw away the several clothes that I’m not going to wear anymore. And I don’t want breakfast and mom cannot understand that. I also don’t want lunch – as in not the kind of lunch that mom makes. I wanna just have corn flakes or something and I don’t want her to make a fuss about it. Firstly I’m not skipping a meal and secondly even if I did its not like I will faint or something. I have never – not once in my life fainted. And I have missed many a meal.

So earlier this morning mom couldn’t understand why I didn’t wanna touch the macaroni she’s made. Coz she makes it well and we always keep pestering her to make it in the morning so we can keep eating it all day. So she got all offended.

So I forced myself to eat some – though she knows I did so very half heartedly.

Then she came to my room, tried to make some conversation about the wedding (it’s as if time and the whole world has shrunk into the three days of the impending wedding - there is nothing else we seem to have to talk about), then changing the topic (thank God for that) asking me if there were any clothes that needed mending/ hemming/ ironing/ anything (see I am annoyed with her but not denying that she's a total sweetheart), all the while looking around for the remote to reduce the volume and make GnR belt out Estranged a little less noisily. And I – like a spoilt, ill-tempered kid refused to talk except in monosyllables, refused to reduce the volume in spite of seeing her discomfort and in spite of knowing where the remote was (tucked in my PJs, covered by my tee-shirt) and kept opening and shutting cd covers and pretending to be sorting them like my life depended on the chore.

The point is – I don’t appreciate having to feel bad. All I want is to be by myself and that’s not too much or too bad a thing methinks. Everyone needs it from time to time. Some need it more than others. In my case there is no polite way of asking everyone at home to go away somewhere for sometime. They’re anyway in their own rooms and no one's really getting in my way, but I want more than that, and that I cannot expect them to understand.

The dawg understands more I think. Like on most Sundays when we’re all at home she’s very happy and energetic. But I think she’s sensed that her slobbering all over me is annoying me today… so she’s curled up under my table and close to my feet and is pretending to or trying to sleep. From time to time she lifts her head and looks at my face for a long moment and then goes back to sleeping. My baby.

Now mom’s got me tea and wants to know if I want biscuits – because I hardly ate breakfast so I must be hungry. Aaaaaarrrrggghhh. See I DON’T want the fuss and the attention and the constant worrying. ARGHH again.

Guess I’ll go for a drive and see if that works.

Of finales and all that...

In exactly 2 weeks I stop being a working woman, and in exactly 2 months an unmarried woman.

Big stuff isn’t it? Maybe not for you reading this – maybe because you’re too young to understand or too old to remember what it feels like to be winding up one monumentous chapter of your life and speeding towards another. Or maybe because you’re not a woman and can’t relate with it, or maybe because you aren’t working or you’re married or both or you just don’t have the imagination to…imagine it.

But for me this is it. It’s as big as it gets. Nothing's ever gonna be the same again, and that's not necessarily a bad thing but it's just so difficult to get used to. It's more change than i have ever had to handle.

A good time to take stock of how i'm feeling.

I feel like crying

Like not talking

Like drowning in work

Like holding time still

Like clinging on to the old and turning away from the new

Like being in the here and now – however messy it be

Like dying – at least in part

Like handcuffs

Like tentacles

Like sunset in a desert

I'm just so scared