Old Yellow Pages ✓

32. people

11th january, friday, 2019

dear diary,

I heard my mom's bedroom door swing shut. There was a click as the tiny triangular latch slid into place. I was lying on my bed and I couldn't look at the door directly, but living in this house for all the seventeen years of my life has made me able to distinguish between doors just by listening to them open and close. I find comfort in this... permanence.

My parents once asked me if I wanted to leave and go somewhere else. I said I didn't because I was just starting to make friends here. Things seemed good.

Besides, how could I leave a house I have been living in all my life?

I had special places here. My room faces east. You can see the dawn cracking from here. When I wake up, my room is bathed in a soft blue-grey glow. Sometime later, pale yellow sunlight breaks into my room, fresh as a lemon, getting hotter as noon nears.

The large, wall-covering west-facing windows of the living room offer a view of the setting sun and the sky in all its orange glory.

The big windows are all over our house. Plenty of light. But there's a particular way in which the light falls on our brown sofas. And that I won't find anywhere else.

I like our grey stone building. There's a soft brown color laced with the gray. There's a certain feel of that stone when I run my fingers along it, that I won't find anywhere else. There are nooks on the terrace. There's a staircase that leads up to the repair station of the elevators. I like to go up there. Sometimes I sit on the parapet and watch the sun sink behind the trees. I can see the airport lights from the other side, golden against the ink-black sky. 

The same question was posed to me when I was in grade 9. Did I want to go somewhere else?  I had made new friends in my bus, was getting a good life and my only thought was that my birthday, which was approaching, couldn't be terrible. I wanted to spend that day with them. So I refused.

I can't believe such silly things mattered to me. I've now learnt never to base my decisions on people because they are temporary. I can't sacrifice everything to be with people who will go away anyway. I have no more expectations. I've learnt that people who are meant to stay with me will stay and will somehow find their way back into my life. The others will grow apart and that's okay.

So many opportunities have been presented to me, and I haven't been ready to take them, and I regret that now.

Maybe leaving a place and starting over isn't so bad after all. Sometimes it's best to let go and start anew. It's true that I had no idea things would turn out like this. Considering how smoothly my life was going, no one could have predicted this sad phase and loneliness. Though I intended to keep things that way, I found myself experiencing what I was wanting to actually avoid by not changing my school. But again, there was no sure path to a happy school life.

Maybe I should have been ready for a new adventure.

Recently, Tanisha asked me my opinion when she was at a fork in her life. Should she change her school after class 10? I saw myself in her. The things holding her back were exactly what had tied my legs too—she was popular, had friends. I told her these things are transient, and decisions can't be based on them.

She thanked me and said I had given her a different perspective.

I hope she makes the right decision.

Or, more appropriately, I hope the decision she makes turns out to be the right one.

❄