Like the back of her own hand, they say

But in passing she caught glance of a back of a hand she did not know
with unknown lines and contours,
she stared as if it were the back of hands of a stranger
and in that moment she knew which part of her body would age unrecognisably first.

You imagine a scenario in which at the crucial point, you gave in to the inner numb buzz that let's you know that deeply, nothing really matters, and finally letting go, tired of all the nonsense and tired of all the voices, tired of all selfishness and all farces, tired of all the selling out of love and of justice, tired of being alone, you

got lost in the vast nothingness of white snow, snuck into a creak between the layers, embraced the numbness.

This is love's eternal duty:
To stretch you, to beat you out, to mould you and shape you
To sift the superficial from the true; to distill purity from the plain


and so if you find yourself left on the dry tide of love after its job is done
and you find yourself truer, although worn and beaten
and you have fought the bitter bite of regret and envy and hatred - and won;
the light in you has grown stronger (for what is faith except the torch that guides us in our hearts)

then just know that love has done its eternal duty
and like all the people before you and all the people around you and all who will come after you,
you are part of the fabric of life and of humanity that has been tested and shaped by love

sometimes all it takes is a dream to unhinge you.
i wake up with your warmth on my skin. a look on your face. feelings in your eyes. a declaration of love. a comfort of knowing that it still matters to you. another few steps walked together.
then i wake, and i still do not have you.

We must be careful that in our journeying and coping, we don't end up taking on the narrative of the villain. Some thoughts that may foreshadow a resemblance to the villain's voice:

"Everyone does it. Evil is reality. If I act unjustly, I am just being a normal player in this world."
"All of these ________ people are the same."
"You/They made me do this. If I hurt you/them, it is your/their fault."
"For me to do well, you need to crumble."

I searched for the word to talk about how i've felt after the 'coming home' of the cycling trip. i feel... free. light. like i don't need anyone or anything really. like everything i need to live and to cope, i have within me, within my means.

The word came to me today, in a short bliss when i drove on the highway and the sunlight illuminated the paddy fields, the landscape around me and i thought for a moment that happiness is munching on muruku, those delicious crunchy things loaded in good spices, given by my student, made by the closest thing she had to a mother.

The word was - self-sufficient. That's how i feel. And self-sufficient means, yes, that i earn enough money to physically sustain myself and everything i physically need; but also, that i am emotionally sufficient for myself now, no longer to need emotional attachments or outside admiration to feel worthy. that i also do not need anyone's approval to feel alright. that everything i need to live, to cope, physically, emotionally, spiritually, i have within, and within my means.

That's alright. That's an alright way to be feeling after many years existing on a false sense of helplessness.

its because i have broken and have put myself together. Also, it is why i decided to keep teaching - because in that it pays me, and it gives me a sense of purpose, and in that the relationship with my students gives me a way to feel emotionally and spiritually both fulfilled and needed - it is one good decision that keeps me feeling self-sufficient. because that is what we should be doing anyway, more and more of the things that make us feel alive, feel like ourselves, that keeps building a force that grows and feeds back into itself - self sufficient.

Teacher Thoughts

1. Care. That is number one. It starts from the heart. If you care for them, if you learn their names, they will know it. They will fall into your circle of influence. This will show in your attitude towards them - in whether you smile at them, how you greet them.

2. Be consistent. Do not lower the expectations. Do not bend the rules. Do not 'pick your battles'. Make the rules clear from Day One. Hold it every.time. Each day's goal is 100% students 100% doing what you want, what they need to succeed in this class.
This consistency is what will change their behaviours; change their lives. Also apply it to yourself. Be consistent with routines and structure.

3. Make routines. Anything that will be repeated. Make it a routine.

4. Do not repeat things. Say it once, follow through.

5. Do not raise your voice or show emotion / frustration. Always tow the line of the management system. Rest in it doing its job.

6. Teaching English is building blocks. The basic brick is vocabulary - words. Build word banks. Then sentences. Then passages.

7. Make charts.

8. Create jobs from day one. Kids invest in being an active participant in classroom culture building.

It's not easy at all.

It's easy to breathe, to exist.
Living? It's hard as hell.  It takes courage to show up day after day,  to keep pushing to be where we are, to hold on to dreams, to not be beaten by brick walls around the way. It takes a special kind of strength to hold on to innocence and do things out of a good heart. It takes strength to not become the one who is bitter when compared,  as we all do, to the success of others.

It takes fortitude to live with and through pain, and failures, and the realisations of how truly limited we are; truly needy, and yet, truly alone. It takes a hidden treasure to walk with life through days when you suffer from a dry soul.

It's the simplest thing, and the hardest thing.

they never found her body. the man who worked in the stall nearby reported seeing her walk into the sea. he thought it was strange that she was all alone, and she looked entranced.

Later they would find leftover cans of beer in her car; cigarette butts in her room. a video left on her laptop of her singing, 'its times like these we learn to live again'. pieces of writing, of poetry that she had written at different times through the years. a picture of her smiling.

1.

the hurting person
the hurting teacher
pushes the sticky welcome of the floor away
defying gravity
and with the crumbling remains of debris,
puts one foot in front of another.
smiles,  adding an extra cheer in her voice
overcompensating for the deep hollow echoing inside
hurting teachers; hurting parents, hurting workers everywhere

we build with blood weeping from our broken parts.

tell them i was broken
tell them....i was pieces of a broken pot
but for all the brokenness; all the empty pieces and jagged edges, all the bleeding of the substance i tried to hold
i did my best
to love
to embrace
to have a life of meaning
with all my broken pieces

breathing out slowly... letting go.

to feel heavy and light at the same time..

It was about the time when reports began to be confirmed that the plane had been shot down, with 298 people and children inside, because of a conflict unrelated to the people on board, that i thought to myself 'I don't want to live in this world anymore'.

It is a world where people kill each other, where massacre and injustice happen because of what when scaled down to its simplest form is the evil within people - ego, pride, greed. It is a world where 298 people go on a commercial flight for a holiday or to come home, and are shot down because of  A MISTAKE. 298 people, a plane caught in a case of MISTAKEN IDENTITY. they were not part of a war. there was not even any reason or motive behind the shooter's actions. nothing they wanted to achieve. 298 people died for an arbitrary, meaningless incident.

It was about this time when I realised nothing matters. If nothing makes sense, nothing matters. The last remnants of my belief that 'things happen for a reason' is gone with the understanding that there is no reason in what happened, no reason that brought them there. and if i were to say there is a reason for things to happen in MY life, some pattern of stars that have been written for my future, then I am saying that those on the plane had to be on that plane to die for some reason. but i cannot say that. there is no reason.

nothing matters, then. nothing really means anything. all life is about is for me to struggle out my existence, for my own sake so that I MAY BE REDEEMED. so that when all is done, i am found on the right side of light and darkness. that i am found on the right side of eternity. All life is about this- about making my own life worth its existence, FOR MY OWN SAKE. no changing the world, no real impact. i need to act and work in a way that my living will redeem my self, and my loved ones with me.

The path life takes us...

Its curious how the dots connect in our lives. A seemingly blank future, in the sense that nothing yet exists and there is no telling what can happen, other than the sketches we etch out of what (we think) we want - our plans. Plans of work, of marriage, of a place to live - minute plans like what to have for dinner or bigger plans like to write a book. None of it exists other than by imaginations in our minds. We dream of making them true, and we dream of the 'happiness' that comes along with it. We dream of 'having arrived'.

But what actually happens, happens arbitrarily. Shaped by the million forces that are outside our control. And it is curious, how these seemingly arbitrary incidences shape our lives. If I hadn't showed up for that interview, I would never have met you. If I had taken the scholarship as I sometimes regret not doing, I wouldn't have been looking for a job and set up that interview. If I weren't driving and listening to the radio at the exact time you were on, I would never have heard of you or your work. I wouldn't be anticipating a life of being alone, wrapped up in love for you, wondering at the possibility of one day adopting and raising a child without a man, having failed to muster any love for someone else comparable to the force our arbitrary steps has led us to.

And yet, by principle of the same arbitrary pattern, anything can happen. And we can be judged only in history.

There is, then, no need for fear. No need for worry.
There is need only to BE - to grow our hearts into a strong, discerning torch that allows us to live fully and love truly.

Today they found some chocolate sticks in my bag. I bought it earlier because I was feeling lousy and sick, and thought I needed a sweet snack to keep myself going. This time, he asked me if he could take it. I said...its mine...because I really did feel like I sorta need it..and I said you can take one but I need the rest.  In hindsight I don't know why it was such a big deal...maybe automatic response to rightaway reject because they always try to take things they see. He left with it to help me put my bags on my table. I went back to the table and it wasn't there. They took all of it, I thought. Oh well, I thought...at least this time he asked. I thought back to the times he took my stuff without asking. And the times he seemed to take it lightly when I talked to him about it. At least he asked this time, I thought. That's progress .

It wasn't until layer when I was about to leave for the day that I saw it...The box of chocolate sticks, in my bag. They left it back there after all.

...

I've been thinking I should journal our journey together, me and him, Sasi. I first had him last year, 2013 in my remove class. He was so difficult, maybe my most.difficult student at first. Couldn't sit still. Ran around. Head of pack he led the others to disruption. Loud.

Maybe about four or five months into the year, he stole my blue tac and chewed on it. I had to ask him to spit it in my hand. I was out of my wits with him.

Once I talked to him at the balcony.  Then I realised his bm or English was poor....A lot of times it was that he couldn't understand or communicate with me more than anything. I asked him about his background. ..His father had died, about a month before. He was real then, I could see the sad in his eyes. It was then he became to me a human, not just an annoying kid.

I noticed how he liked drawing,  colouring. He became much better towards the end of the year.

Somewhere mid year I trusted him and he took my token gifts...silly little key chains that were meant for them anyway. I thought incredulously. ...why would you.steal something that we meant for you in the first place? Word got out and he got caned for it, and his friends.

I took them bowling,  then to read at my house. McDonald's for him for the first time. First time I saw his home. I thought. ...This is the epitome of the student we had joined to serve. Capable,  smart, with potential...but underprivileged.  Lacking opportunities.

He was one of the 8 in class who got the minimum 20 I set on the mid term paper...A difficult paper. I took them to KFC. ..frost. time for him. He asked for three pieces of chicken and only ate one. A few days later I asked him if he went home and ate the other two. He gave it to his mom. I knew it.

Sasikumar is the reason why I will stay texting next year.  I don't want our friendship to end.

Perhaps after the raging waves have subsided, and all the blinding passions have ceased; and all desires, and all ideals suspended in a vacuum to test for gravity: I will find myself on the other side, whole. Substantial. I will recognise myself as someone I had glimpsed, as a dream that I'd known as a child.

On ageing

Feeling 'Time', tangibly :

When you find in yourself bitterness - at someone else's happiness, at something in the past, at something you want but cannot have. Departure from innocence. A great divorce.

When you hear yourself warning a young girl, and you hear your voice as an echo of what older people used to say to you when you didn't understand, with all the 'myths' of danger you took for the bothersome worries of adults, and you see them looking at you how you used to look at them, with the childish innocence of pure things - a departure between ideas of pure love and ravaging sex.

When at first glance of teenagers you glimpse them through your own teenage eyes and feel within a flutter of curiosity that you used to feel for wanting to get to know your peers - and you realize these are children, you are a whole generation apart - your feelings and thoughts are worlds apart.

There is no reward.

Perhaps it isn't about a reward. Perhaps it is just about the sheer tenacity of showing up. Perhaps it is about drumming the same effort, day after day, in dogged pursuit. Perhaps it is about just showing up for your part of the work everyday and getting back up and doing it again the next day. Perhaps it is all about the daily push and trudging. Maybe in trudging there is courage to never give up, strength to keep showing up even when things seem to be falling apart.

We hung out around the wooden table, sitting on our plastic chairs, smoking and playing cards. This guy showed up, he looked a lot like Adam Duritz. He was with an older man and two women. He had an air of familiarity. He answered calls all business-like as he dealt the cards. He lit a joint which we shared, passing around the table. He started talking about some Nazi supremacy agenda conspiracy theory. I thought it sounded like nonsense and had the urge to leave. I left, retired to my room. The next day, the old wise one Rico confirmed it. He is clever, too clever for his own good and sometimes talks nonsense which people buy. I didn't buy it, something in my skin told me this is that much bullshit I needed to get away from. I was glad that once again, I made sense, even when I didnt.

But I must stop living as if it is for other people.

I must stop doing things just because I think others would approve, and start doing things regardless of what people think. I must stop shifting my life around fear - fear of what people think, fear of failure, fear of being vulnerable. Because, true - while this is how you have lived your whole life - while you have been wired to drop your eyes and your gifts at the gaze of others... your tomorrows are wide open. They have not yet been written. And if you do not set yourself free, you will die in fear.

This fear has caused your life to be a trap. It has caused you to be lonely. It has caused you to be inefficient, unproductive. It has caused you to enter depraved, desperate relationships. It has caused you to be self-destructive. It has caused you to shift your feet, head hanging low, under the weight of a big black cloud. It has caused you to be silent when you should have been speaking out. It has caused you to tie your arms down when you were moved to act. It has caused you to be deeply, deeply unhappy. Deeply unsettled. It has caused you to engineer everything you've had the urge to attempt to stay small, to stay below the radar; it has caused you to crumble and bolt the moment the opportunity for greater things appeared.

If you keep shifting your life around these lines of fear, you will die unfulfilled.

Re-set yourself. SPEAK. SING. WRITE. DANCE.

DARE. Make DARE your motto, not 'what if''. DARE, and fail, maybe, but the DARING is success in itself. It is Courage itself. It is what 'DOING' is made of. the DARE to fail. the DARE to move inch by inch, the DARE to come within reach, and breathe, of making something happen.

But life is decidedly a charmed thing. Nothing is solid, nothing is one. Everything shifts and layers.  It is a mish mash of neat blocks of ambition scattered with messes of dreams and fears and failures. Because people are decidedly complex. We exist in shifting shapes. I am the calm exterior before 30 children. I am the crumbling mess that refuses to come out of bed, wanting to shut the world off.  I am the kind mother. I am the angry lover who would join a game of hurting each other. I am a pure soul who wants to do good. I am the jealous cheater who would in one swipe, live in destruction of everything I am trying to build. Grappling, grappling on the edges.

i remained silent
and waited for the weight of my unspoken words to
throw me off the edge and
drown me in a sea of noise
of people

meanwhile inspiration stopped knocking
offended by my lack of discipline
to throw everything out of my hands and
pick up a pen, it
went in search
for someone else
who would see it for what it was
create something of it

and so i feel like i have failed it
as i have
failed myself
in my search of doing
in my search of meaning i have
traded in
a little of my soul
a little of my poetry

it was because i thought no one was listening
it was because i thought i could not reveal these thoughts to anyone
in truth i was afraid
having built a fortress of
defenses
around my secret thoughts
penetrable only by death
only death, perhaps, will split me open

i revelled in the ordinary
the profane
and sold the sacred

i revelled in temporary connections
with the giddiness of a child
and sold my solid truths

i second guessed everything about myself
and came out in pieces

the gold that stitched my seams
turning into plastic
in my rushing, frail hands

i had nothing left.

You begin to feel less certain about yourself, where once you were surefooted and never second guessed, now you are uncertain about your steps and your choices.

While you have become more sure of the ways of the world, you become more uncertain about the fluid vastness of your soul - how its shape and structure shifts and layers.

You are less certain about who you are. You used to pin them down to characteristics - things you care about, things that make you special, in a world full of people; talents, skills, ideas. Younger women come by everyday, surer, louder, more confident and sure-footed. Girls who are smarter, more knowledgeable, who look, speak and write better. Girls who brashenly speak loudly and confidently about everything. Such certainty. But you have seen the world to be large, inexplicable, complex. There is nothing you can say for sure.

You only know of the complexity of things. You only have seen the clear lines between black and white fade to a fuzzy grey. This gives you understanding, but it also leaves you bitter. You wonder if this is where the slippery slope starts... if this is the point where you awake to find yourself too old, too weathered to care. And you can awake in one of two ways. or you could awake in an endless possibility of ways.

You feel like something has to change. You live in this uncertainty. You accept that life is uncertain.

There are times when you think - these kids are crazy!!
When fights break out here and there, boys hit each other, ties are pulled around necks, a random sharp mathematical tool is waved about,  hormonal boys go near girls and hormonal girls hang around outside the class talking to boys, boys randomly shout and say random things,  give you the eye and refuse to listen, things are pulled out from your bag and threaten to be taken. And you wonder, was I really this insane too??

Today was one of those days.

The day turns, sun rises as usual..world awakes to get to business as usual.

But 239 people are missing. Left the earth, started a journey, departed but never arrived. How did it happen? Why that plane? There is no rhyme or reason, no logical explanation that we can point to to make sense of it, no saying it is a consequence of any choices made. Because sometimes things just are.

Let there be no laughter today; no music, no talk. No quarrels and no ambitions. No teaching,  no singing. Let us hang our heads low, drag our feet with the weight of sorrows. Let's honour silence.

I miss believing in magic.

I miss the feeling of listening to a piece of music, and feeling complete - like we are understood, like we are in tune with the world, like we are infinite.

I miss looking out the windows at passing sceneries and feeling like the world belongs to us under our travelling feet, or sitting in a suspended moment staring at the waves, feeling alive.

I miss being in love, and feeling like nothing can go wrong to ruin my day, feeling like finally everything makes sense, I am accepted,  my life is set.

I miss believing that I can do anything I set my mind and heart to.

I miss believing in magic.



I am doing more real things than how I used to dream when I was younger,  but I still wish I had magic in me...I wish to be in love, that insanity that makes things more real than real, that reason that turns the improbable to be the most logical thing, that substance that would put things in order. I want that magic.

Mea culpa.

I have done wrong. Did I have any intention for it to turn out this way? No. I didn't see it coming. But it came from a place of people, needing a point of contact. A connection was made. I dipped in rather than was wise. I wrecked it because my folly was misaligned to my thoughts of what was 'right'. I behaved inconsistently because my actions were inconsistent with my thoughts, the ideal state I wish to be in. My need for human contact overbearing 'right'. Was it bound to happen? Yes. My heart is misaligned.  I hurt others in the process, discarded my reputation, put myself to shame.
My only need to justify is mea culpa. We are messy by nature. Feelings, thoughts, intentions, get messy. This was my mess.  It doesn't make it okay. It is what it is.

A day of little gems, like magic gleaming from the ordinary;

A child I have been trying to woo, who I thought hated me, who I overheard informing the drinks aunty that 'this teacher is very nice' as I was walking away to help his friend, who was stuck with a bicycle lock which couldn't open. I couldn't believe it was him, I wanted to go back and ask him, what did you just say?

The being able to help the boy release his bike from the lock, by wedging it with a hammer - which I just did to give it a shot, not really thinking it would work. It was WIN that it did. And the boy, usually 'too cool', who was cool enough to really say thank you, more than once.  No matter how 'cool' they try to look sometimes, mostly they are polite sweethearts.

The father who waited at the side of the road as I brought his son back, and grandpa. Asking if I wanted coffee, awkwardly. And the child who called just to chat and say he 'lied!' when he said 'Sorry wrong number' yesterday.

And the lesson remains the same- be open, and things will come to you, connections happen.

Human lives are, by definition, messy. There is mistrust,because there are lies, selfishness, deception. There are schisms between intentions and actions, ideas and doing; and there are mash ups between love and hate, wants and needs, altruism and bitter selfishness, good and evil.

We clash, we tear each other part, we lie to others and ourselves, we cause epic messes. It's the messiness of experiencing everything it means to be human. It's the messiness of being divinely thought, yet humanly weak and destined to fall. Things don't fit neatly into boxes and categories, neither do people.  They are entwined in the tangles of their own messes.

#1 (memories)

The first time i felt heartbreak was when i was 17.

I couldn't accept it, it wrenched my whole being. I called him over and over again, or texted, or did whatever it was just to get his attention. I threatened to hurt myself. At one point, and I remember this distinctly, because I knew at that time that I would remember this for a long time. I played Galapogos out loud and lay on the floor. I took whatever pills i found in the fridge and downed it with some medicinal alcohol. I took a gulp of some washing liquid found in the bathroom, and threw it back out, bubbles in my throat. I used a blade and in a fit, cut my thighs over and over. I called him and ... i don't remember, maybe said what i did. He said something to the effect of, if you want to talk to me, talk to me... you don't have to do anything stupid to get my attention. Well i did at that time, because he wouldn't talk to me... wouldn't respond, wouldn't turn his head to look at me.

I couldn't turn off the voice in my head - the hungry demon who kept saying over and over, you're not wanted.. you're not wanted. What made me obsessed, i think now, was rejection. I wouldve done anything, did do... to get his attention. Now, and then, i think how incredibly stupid i was, and in some ways, still am. Because i still know that pain. how can i deny that, that gutwrenching, destroying pain? like being torn open from the inside out. and that same voice, saying, you're not wanted. you're not worth it.

That night, every fifteen minutes almost systematically i woke up and rushed to the bathroom to throw up. it was like something pulled out from deep, deep in my gut. it left a bitter bile in my mouth, and later i saw, some black stuff at the bottom of the toilet.

Earlier that night my parents found me, asleep or under the surmise of it. They asked me if i wanted something to eat on their way home. I sounded as normal as i can and said no. I made sure i was in bed by the time they got home. did they have any clue? I don't know. Till this day no one knows what happened that night. I couldn't eat anything the next morning. I drank something and threw it back up. Later on, i ate an apple, telling myself if i can keep this down, i'll be alright. i did. i was alright. I seem to remember watching the Oscars on TV. A few days later, i was surprised to discover red wounds, slashed on my thighs.

That was at seventeen. For how incredibly stupid and desperate that was, how can i erase it and say that wasn't me? It is a part of my history... and how i understand things.. the world, people. how i understand desperation and pain. how i feel for people. How i straddle the world of making sense and insanity. how i learn to keep calm and ... through all the years of coping, disowning some things and accepting others and myself with it, how i learn to regulate my own emotions and thoughts, how i learn the necessary sense of humour. and have a sense of proportion, and knowing the next closest thing is death. and learn to be thankful for what i do have.

I wonder if its a battle for everyone. This daily debilitating struggle against self-doubt, fear, insecurity. The kind that stops you from working like you really can, and loving like you really are able to..and want to. Because being able to love, and be loved, is something you have to be secure enough to do - otherwise it becomes a mess, a rubble of defenses, jealousy, neediness. You become parched, and ugly.

But it is not a comparison, or a contest. Everyone has a different story, they fight their own battles, they make their own way.

But you want to be able to fulfill what you have dreamed of, deep inside, a seed planted when you were a child. That you are special; that you are beautifully made by an awesome God, that you are able to do great things. You have seen the edge of this limitlessness within you, when you were in youth. You want to be able to make this complete. You need to, because otherwise you will battle for the rest of your life - you will be bitter, you will be hindered from pure love.

You don't want to grow - jealousy, anger, self-righteousness, vanity, fear; ugliness.
You want to grow - purity, love, beauty - LOVE.
Then cultivate these.

I remember hearing this, that changed my life forever.

In the beginning, there was a dance. An eternal dance. And we were created to be a part of this dance. But along the way, we have forgotten, we forget the steps. So messengers came to teach us again the steps of this dance. They came to teach us how to love, how to dance around others so they could also know this love and return to this dance. This is why I do what I do and who I aim to be. Even though I had forgotten it - even though I get distracted, and tired, emotional and unproductive. Even though i act like a child sometimes, and even though sometimes i want things i think i want. But this is really why i live - i want to be able to dance like that, to be part of that eternal dance of love. And i want this more than anything else - this is the most important thing, even through loss, even through growing old and bitter, even through anger and pride - in the end, i want just to be able to reach that place that i can dance in spite of myself.

Sometimes when perspective is skewed I can feel a bit depressed, hopeless.

But there are also moments when I feel thankful for everything I have. At CNY when people talk about prosperity, it's a good time to think of how prosperous I really am, in so many ways. I'm thankful for my family, for my kids, for having found something to do that gives me purpose. I'm thankful for friends in this journey. I'm thankful for what I have and who I am, and how far I've come.

A few things have changed since I've started teaching:

1. All kids are now my kids. If I'm trying to watch out for a wandering child or gently guiding a random child to the right direction, it's because I feel somewhat responsible for them. If I see a bunch of teenagers loitering outside the local KFC,  I think these are just like my students - I push aside the urge to go and give them a stern warning and ask them to go study.

2. I see people differently. When I saw some detainees at the police station, I thought. ..what if some of my kids turn out like this, and pray that none of them do. When my car was broken into (along with two of my other friends' ) I thought ... I guess this is why I teach for Malaysia too. And I hoped that if one day it was any of my kids who ended up in these gangs who did these things, when they realise it's my car they'll say 'This is teacher's. She was kind to us.' And stop, and maybe leave a note which said 'Sorry teacher'.

3. I have a tendency to scold people who are acting like kids. It comes from being on my toes all day keeping kids to their best expected behaviour.

4. I'm a lot more organised now. Because, all that teaching and talking to kids about being the best they can be and not forgetting their homework.  Also as a teacher being organised is a matter of survival.

5. I now envy different things. I now envy people who've done really well with their students, or who have great classroom management or see moments in their students of things clicking in the right way. I envy these and would like so much to see these happen - for my kids, but also for myself. This may or may not be good, but i guess it's better than envying how good others look or how much fun they're having.

It feels odd sometimes just to watch the chapters of your life turn. I remember times when I was depressed, when I had lost hope and did not know a purpose for my life. I remember times when death felt so close, constantly on my mind. I'm past that now. I have grown a lot, learned a lot, discovered a lot.

Its another chapter now, and I'm going through a few things. And for the first time, i feel like age is happening to me. When i was young i used to observe that i never want to be bitter and angry when i got older. I guessed that it was something that happened with age, with losing the sense of wonder, with being jaded with the world. I told myself i would never be that. Now i see it happening. Its a curious awareness, observing yourself gradually losing some innocence. Finding in yourself some bitterness that was never there before.

I used to regard everyone with wonder - i saw everyone as good. I used to naturally put being polite first. Now, most people annoy me. I find myself being more okay with being mean like never before. I used to have pure intentions, and wished good for everyone. Now, like a creeping demon i discover with shock a twinge of anger at other's happiness. How can this be? But so I find it. I wonder if its just a natural phase.. if its age, finally catching up on me.. i was pure like a child for a long time, not really getting how the people around me could be the way they sometimes can be, callous, bitter. Maybe they grew up faster. Now a divide is being cut out, and it is where my intentions are tested and i have to make a deliberate choice. how will i deliberately live?
On the other hand, I wonder if there is a root to this bitterness.. something i need to get to and resolve, within myself. Something that needs to be unhinged, made peace with. Maybe..