The Girl At 46
Who are you really? I ask myself frequently these days, in rare moments of silence and rarer moments of reflection where the mind decides to stay rooted. Has your definition of yourself changed over time? Perhaps it has, the answer comes. You change as a person as you grow older, your experiences, the people you meet, the sum of all your parts coming together to make you finally whole. Whole in a way that’s different from who you started with.
How do you reconcile your two different selves — the 25-year-old you started out with and the person you are now — the consequences of their very different thoughts? Do you change at your own pace or in tandem with those around you? What if their pace doesn’t always stay in synergy with yours? Do you alter your gait then, match steps and fall in line as you’ve done earlier? Or do you march to your own beat but ensure it’s never too far away from what you think is home? You are 46 now and those beats of yours have a life of their own.
The girl at 25 did not think further ahead. She lived for the moment and the moment, even if a little different from what she would have wished it to be, felt right for that time.
The girl at 46 doesn’t regret living those moments. Her decisions at 25 have brought her happiness and children, who teach you to fall in love as you have never done before.
The road the 25-year-old thought her life would take has changed track over the years. The track isn’t bad but it’s not exactly what she visualised either. It’s laid with a fair amount of responsibility and expectation that sometimes weighs down her walk. She saw the track changing in front of her eyes but never quite grasped what it meant. And each time she felt it was moving further away from where she truly wanted it to go, there were milestones, moments and events that seemed way bigger than her needs and wants. So the girl accepted it and got carried away with the flow.
Now the girl is 46. She wants to travel solo across Japan, see the Kyoto she read about in Pico Iyer’s books, wake up at the crack of dawn to see the fish auction. She wants to publish in international media, travel on the Trans- Siberian, drive from India to Thailand, walk part of the El Camino. She wants to do more, feel more, experience more.
What has changed you may ask. Nothing has, the girl at 46 would say. She was always a nomad at heart, who settled on to expectations and conventions because she did not wish to raise hell. Then years happened, books and friendships came in, she learnt ideas which weren’t exactly new but which hadn’t been expressed before; some disappointments crept in and life took over. The girl realised that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The girl at 46 now wants out. Out of the boring monotony that is sometimes home; she wants to spend a month mulling over an idea at a Writers’ Residency; she wants to walk aimless and agenda-less across spaces she has always wanted to inhabit; she wants to tell the stories of people she has always wanted to tell.
The girl at 46 also wants to be the mom who is a friend to her kids, the woman for whom home will always matter first but she wishes to matter to those within that home too.
The girl at 25 didn’t have the vision that can only come with age. The girl at 46 finally has that gift. She can see the expectations that start building up and closing in like a wall she’d rather break. She can see the work she loves doing getting back on the track, something she struggled hard to reach out for. This time, the girl at 46 isn’t hassled when the road or life changes track. It takes a lot to keep her head above the water for sure but this time, she isn’t getting swept away with the tide.
