ایکانت

Living alone can teach you a lot especially when you're away from home and family, even if you have built up a queer sorta family away from brick and mortar. The idea--quite nebulous in Pakistan--of not being cut out for marriage, is becoming clearer now. There is too much baggage attached to the idea, too much pressure as you get older, too many expectations of the sort of person you'll be: wife, mother, daughter-in-law, etc. I quite like my freedom and independence, of being allowed the liberty to do what I want within reason, of living my life with almost minimal interference. That goes away. Unless you're very, very lucky and let's be real here: that kinda luck is hard won. That kinda luck is made, not given. I've seen all sorts of in-laws, women changed by living with them, dealing with the pressures of joint family systems and let me say that here, because I know me and what it can do to me, joint family systems are no systems for people like me. When people outside the family circle comment on how important having my own independence will be to me, you realize it doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

There are possible opportunities I'm mulling including starting up in the newspaper industry back home which will involve working at a desk, no matter how minuscule and interacting with *gasp* actual people. I think I didn't realize how much I was missing until I came here. Where it takes me afterwards remains to be seen although the dream is still to pursue a Creative Writing MFA. The parental units, quite possibly after discovering saying no does little to deter me, are standing behind me in the decision to continue postgraduate education. Or it may just be they're hoping I pick up a husband in the interim near-year between when I might return and when I'll hopefully set sail for another PG degree. It's a nice dream, a lofty one for a hermit like me who quite likes solitude almost treating it like a gift until it turns to loneliness in those brief moments, before switching back again.

Perhaps the idea of having a person to depend on is alluring -- a steady diet of Hollywood films glazes you in the belief that it's essential to have some sort of romantic interest in your life -- but are romance and marriage one and the same? Yes, I realize culturally they are and yes, religiously too. I believe in religion and spirituality far too much to decide to live my life where the two are mutually exclusive. That may, and has in the past, seem like I'm rather intense and perhaps in a certain light, I am. I like to know where I'm going, even if it's a general idea and I stop a million times along the way to smell the flowers. Every last detail of my life needn't be planned; in fact, I think that may turn out far too stifling, but some structure is nice. Some idea of where I'm headed. And going into a relationship without it heading in a suitable direction is troubling. I suppose the safest recourse for a person like me is if it didn't explicitly start out as a relationship and began as a friendship instead. I think that may be the safest possibility and something that I'd actually believe in. It's harder to be friends after all than in lust with someone you might never have. 

Perhaps in the end, I simply want more than is humanely possible in which case the largely solitudinal life I've led so far is perfectly fine. Besides, as I'm reminded of time and again, you need to be alone to write and if I churn out a masterpiece, I quite think it'll all be worth it.

But perhaps tomorrow will be different?