I shall live. I shall live.

When I was 23 a friend set me up with her bookish cousin who in hind sight was a sweet boy. He was a book worm, majorly into sci-fi books and animated series and flicks. I would actually wake up at 6:30 AM every day and sit yawning in front of the TV to catch the latest episode of the cartoon series just so we could talk about it. Some days he would wake me up through consecutive missed calls ensuring I didn’t miss the episode. Those were the days of the missed calls. Missed calls meant call me back right now cause I don’t have balance or it meant call me back later cause Mum won’t let me use her phone and she gets an itemised bill that shall give her all the gory details about me at the end of month and she’ll get to know exactly which boy I have been romancing over the phone, at the most unearthly hours. I digress. So the boy took me out a couple of times and we went trapezing on his bike around the entire city, went for walks on the beach, had ice creams and one day he got me a soft toy. It was a dog and I named it Jumble. I was young, just out of college, waiting to begin my first job and despite thinking I was mature beyond my years I actually loved that soft, fuzzy toy. Jumble got lost somewhere along way, shifting cities and jobs, time and time again. The boy and I parted as we began, as friends. Boys and men have come and gone. We meet and we part. Like someone said men come and go and they indeed do. Now that I shall be 30 in about 7 months, people also tell me that it won’t always be like this. There’ll come a time when age would have played havoc with your looks and men won’t find you attractive anymore. In short they are warning me against the perils of being the possible old maid or spinster. I laugh and ask them what makes them think that I have always had constant stream of admirers throughout my twenties and not that I surround myself with men who fancy me and have never done so. I don’t flatter myself about the men in my life. Of course I do like the periodic bouts of incessant attention but there has never been any guarantee of uninterrupted attention and no stable relationship and it has all been so transitory. So yeah for now I am gonna hope something good does come along someday and if and when it doesn’t come, well I have my work, my life. That is one thing I have had, I have and I shall have. And I shall live. I shall live.

We live in a world of glorious uncertainties where the scales keep tipping from one end to the other. Nothing is guaranteed, not success, not love, not money and health the least of all. Nothing at all. We live one moment at a time, one day at a time. We tiptoe into the next day rather cautiously most times and happily those rare times. When something that might be joyous reveals itself slowly, bit by bit, one step at a time I have to pinch myself to make myself believe that this might be true or am I imagining this? No you don’t know who you are but surprisingly you make me smile. I shall leave it at that.