The winter of my discontent

on failing at this life (love) business

Hello there,

Just wanted to take a second to say I was right a few weeks ago; the springtime was short-lived as anticipated and I am now very much in the winter of my discontent. The winter hasn’t arrived yet, but she’s getting there, and it’s painful.

Maybe this is why women are wiser when it comes to emotional ‘matters’ than men. I mean, so many reasons, obviously. But a most evident one is that we are forced from a very young age to sit with deeply distressing and uncomfortable feelings at least once a month. I don’t know why I am 24 years old and only now coming to these solidified insights about something as taken for granted and predictable as my period, but I think only this year have I come to realize and embody its power. Ok, perhaps embody is giving myself too much credit. I often do not apply my wisdom in “real life”.

For example, after multiple tried and failed attempts at this whole (stupid) love game, I should have learned by now not to yank my heart out of my chest and hurl it at the object of my affection within an unreasonably short time of knowing them. But I do this. I even see an animated visual of this in my head, followed by a sudden retreat upon realizing I gave too much of myself too quickly.

And why do I do this? Why do I want people to ‘know me’ inside out in the early stages? What’s the rush? And I understand now that I am in a rush - not because of me or my own desire to live my life at 56x speed. But because what the heck am I seeing all around me? Engagements and baat pakkis and marriage and babies, and then more babies.

I wonder if being a part of a minority Muslim community that does things a certain way, within the larger majority Muslim society that does things a slightly different, but still in line with convention way, makes this experience of discomfort as I choose not to conform ever more intense. Sorry for long sentence. It’s like I’m turning up my nose at the wider world of which I am a part, but also at the smaller world with which I have a close yet distant, fond yet turbulent relationship. I am a part and I am also very much not.

I wonder if everyone feels like this, this pressure, and I wonder if that pressure comes from a place of, I dunno, ancestral practicality? Or just present day practicality? In my experience, it hasn’t really ever led to good. And the more I beat myself up for not being able to do things the traditional way, the more I simultaneously learn that perhaps they cannot be done that way anymore at all.

I was at a friend’s one evening, and for a moment I looked to my left and saw a group of 3 people that had gathered, laughing with each other one instant and the next all three had their heads down, faces illuminated by their screens. It’s always bothered me, this reality. So much so that I am willing to do a year-long thesis project on it. And I am certain this way that we live has an effect on our relationships and how we go about connecting with others. I’m not sure what the connection is, but I’m thinking a combination of shortened attention spans as a result of more distractions, this culture of swiping and ghosting, instant gratification, all that. I wonder if all of us are just hurt and not acknowledging it because it’s our new normal.

Maybe there’s no connection at all and I’m looking to justify my rash decisions and my fears that I’m doing just about everything in my life wrong by blaming it all on our increasingly ingrained systems. The rational side of me knows that the connection exists, & the approaching-winter (PMS, for those of you who haven’t picked up on the language yet) side of me wants to blame myself for all of my woes. But amidst all of the things I do not know, and amidst all of my overt criticism for these worlds I inhabit, I do know that I have simplistic conclusions on my side. And today’s is that just like I knew my springtime was temporary, so very much is my winter.