Shifting

I have been looking at Facebook and suddenly am so conscious of how much time has passed and how old I am getting. In everyone's photo album are wedding pictures, a family friend whom I have always felt is a little girl is now writing insightful and mature thoughts on the meaning of education in her final year in college. Where did all these time go? And how do I feel about these five years that have passed me by ever since I left the small sunny island on the equator?

The feelings I have are complex, and are hard to articulate. These is a nagging sense of sadness, at the things I have missed. Somehow I feel that these five years have been a blur and a blank, I feel that instead of moving forward, I have been stationary, on a still sea with my sails unfurled waiting for the next monsoon wind, and I have been waiting five years.

When I look at all these changes from my friends' lives and watch them all one by one step into next exciting phases--building their own homes, chasing after their dreams, or even exploring the world, I feel the nagging sense of fear that has seeped into me since my move. I have lost so much of the old confidence I had when I was younger, and with nothing to show for or to explain this mysterious loss.

I feel a sense of loss, of time, of myself, of possibilities. I feel that instead of exploring, I have been growing inward into myself these past five years. I don't know if it has to do with uprooting myself, or just an innate cowardice that has to do with my own personality, but I feel so afraid these days. Of things invisible and hard to explain. Have I lost my idealism? Perhaps, but it is not that which I mourn. I have lost the best years of my life and the lives of those around me in this inexplicable stillness called adaptation. Yes, moving is a kind of freedom, but there is also a deep sense of isolation. I feel like that guy in Cast away who was stranded on an island and have lost all sense of time. Living days inside of himself and returning to catch a glimpse of the ghost world he has missed in his years of isolation.

Perhaps even time is communal. Perhaps, it is because I no longer have others around me that I no longer follow their direction and growth. I told my co-workers the other day, how glad I am that I no longer have to suffer the same kind of social pressure in Asia now that I am here, but the social pressure is also where one finds the strength to push ahead. Because your friend has become a mother and has shown the way, you know you will be ok when your time comes. One feels a social bond and a kind of confidence that is found in those around you.

I miss that sense of community. I grew up with these people, and I miss them. I have this fear that when I return to witness their big moments, I will be an outsider. Perhaps that is why exile is such a fearful thing--to be torn from this community by force. What I have missed is more than this concept of home, it is this knowledge of the lives of those around me, and the confidence that arise out of shared experiences.

Mostly, I feel alone. Sometimes I rejoice in that, because I am safe from critical eyes and set time tables for maturity, but in moments like this, I feel my loss deeply.

Perhaps, it will always be a case of "what if". What if I had never moved.. But the answer will always be silence, just like the way my heart resounds now when I think of how the road will branch from here, and how I will only move further and further away from those memories that still ground me when I think of home, when I think of friends, and when I think of my youth and the confidence I once feel in a future I know now that I am only ever unsure of, like a shifting ground of sand.