Infinite Ink

I am tired...

I am tired of the view from my window. I can see the trees swaying in the wind and the creek making its way past the apartment complex. Sometimes I see squirrels playing in the branches of the trees. My mother even saw a raccoon once. The trees shield this side of the apartment building from the sunlight. The result is that during dawn and dusk, when I am scurrying about in my attempts to pray the morning and evening prayers on time, the light coming into my room is deceptively darker than the actual brightness of the day outside. I learned to set the alarm on my cell phone for the morning prayer instead of looking at the sky through my window.

I am tired of noticing my parents' attempts to manipulate me into behaving the way they want me to behave. They have raised me since I was an infant. They know all my moods and expressions. They know exactly how to push my buttons. I am like a defective robot with the wiring trailing out at the edges. Sometimes my mother trips over a wire and sets me off, and sometimes my father tugs at a wire and I freeze. It is not a nice way to function because I get deceived into thinking that I have a handle on my feelings, then along comes parental input and I immediately malfunction.

I am tired of being a good listener. Over the course of a lifetime, I have listened to a fair share of people's problems. Now I am in this phase where I don't want to listen to other people anymore. I just want to be. I want to be the water lily floating along serenely at the surface of the pond. I want to relax and see where the flow takes me. The reality is that I need to keep my guard up most of the time to protect myself from family issues and to maintain healthy boundaries with my parents.

I am tired of observing life from the sidelines. I want to participate in life, and not on my parents' terms. I want to meet new people. This is where the core of the problem lies. My parents don't socialize me, and I hesitate to wander into untested waters. Maybe this is better for me at present. I can only wait and wonder.