Week Six 2011- I cannot dredge the same lake over and over. I cannot be swept away by the same river. I cannot tumble forever down the same waterfall. I cannot be quenched by drinking again and again by the same drop. I want to evaporate and float back to the stardust from where I came and never ever drop down to Earth again.

Too much seriousness. Too much intensity. Too much. I can not do it anymore.

I am running towards being 50 soon. I do not presume that I might reach it. I made it to here. But if there is a future, I want to live in day tight compartments never again. I want to live in seconds, in moments, in breaths. In now.

I used to think that planning my day, planning my week, planning the month was a good method. But I didn't make time for myself in that grid. Thought I was living, doing the things that life planted within me to do and that was my role. But I am lacking today, lost in a maze. Daughter, Wife, Mother, every role else that I never planned  to be fits me except being Tasnim.

And now even I have forgotten who she is, Tasnim; she is lost. Lost in a dust storm. 

Life is a desert, we go from caravan to oasis, tree to well, dune to horizon, remembering the obstacles and enemies on the way to refreshments and friends. Chasing mirages and finding miracles. The desert takes us, colours our skin, hardens the soul and places sand within us in places no sand should be. I kicked up so much dust forging a path no one else could ever have chosed. Fought battles not a soul would understand. Etched out such a story what no one deciphered. And I am standing here alone, a winner, kept her family together, everyone's here, playing their part.  Grumpy victims winners.

My life became from Stardust. No one saw me coalesce from the Cosmos to this form. And yet it is this dust that I spend all my life in my daily ways to clean away, washing and sweeping, rinsing and repeating. Dust which never settles but which will become of me soon enough one day. 

But today, now, I wish I could have done what Siddhartha Gautama chose. Shunned the chores of the world and faced the reality of my self and taken it easy and found one day at a time a cherished gift, a wonderful embodiment of peace and calm and warmth. I could have been tranquil and satisfied with just me and marvelled at the spirit of well-being embalming me.

But, I'm the mother. The one job, the only job.  The truth is, parents do what they have to do to make you, the child who you should be, and care not for what their children think of that. It is done and that is that, one day rolls into the next turning into a lifetime, my legacy; monster of a mother. 

Parents they want more and more that children will bow and bend because of what they did. I do this too. Well,  the truth is, children do not care what a mother did. No child loves the mother for the sacrifices she made. They do not even want to know, to tell the truth, they do not even believe all the things a parent has done. Until the the robe floats down upon them and they have to play the part, and then, they will vow in your face to do it totally differently.

A wife, I am. The truth is, no husband wants half of what a wife does for him. He wants what he wants and sometimes doesn't even tell what it is he really wants, because he too is up to his ears with other's wants, exhausted  by the chores, the toil that comes as he plays his part and never gets a chance to know what he truly wants, eh, hey who knows?

And that leaves me, ok ..ok who? Who me?