When A Lie Becomes The Truth
A series of questionable decisions
16-year-old me was very much self-aware in her own madness. She was confident and didn’t constrain her aspirations to a budget. She didn’t think about mortgages, taxes or credit scores. She dreamed of being a writer, and that was that.
Except, I grew a little less delusional and began to carry with me the weight of infinite expectations supposedly wiser people had on my life, and what I was to make of my future. Off I went to business school to give my all to something I didn’t truly want for a second. Yet, I pushed through and found creative refuge in marketing because that meant I could still write. I guess that worked for some time.
Last week, I sat down at the end of my bed to cry and talk my partner’s ears off with yet another mid-mid-life crisis about my career and who I am, and what the hell it is that I want. And the answer, as it turns out, lies within my inner child. What I want is what I have always wanted. You can only hide from yourself for so long.
Six job titles, a one-way ticket home and an official GAD and OCD diagnosis later, I am ready to quit my commercial management postgraduate, change the way I take care of my mind, and embark on a TCM therapy journey (more on that later). Most importantly, I am ready to stop forcing myself to be someone I am not.
Coming home has allowed me to rediscover parts of myself that I had neglected for too long. At the same time that this clarity brought me liberating peace, it has also filled me with new doubts, and an empty bank account.
Often, I dwell on the what-ifs. If only I had studied what I wanted to study in the first place, my writing wouldn’t be so mediocre. Perhaps I’d know the words that escape me to describe the things I feel so deeply, the words I long to meet. Maybe if I had learnt English sooner, I’d always know where to place the commas, I would know syntax, and maybe I wouldn’t need Grammarly.
Just maybe, having made the right decisions would fill in the gap between my intellect and my body and my not-nearly-enough Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, as lovingly pointed out by Jane when I first set foot in this country. If only Jane hadn’t assumed I eat armadillos or questioned my knowledge of British History, which I have to admit is quite weak, but mostly, if only she hadn’t made sure I felt just how foreign I was in and to this culture. Maybe there would be no walls between me and language.
But the truth will set me free. I will read Shakespeare on my own and dissect every piece of Instagram neo-poetry that I can find, and I might even give fiction a go. I will write tasteless, awfully disturbing, I-wanna-rip-my-eyes-out quality books. And I will keep calling myself a writer until I believe it as much as my heart does. I will hold on to the inexorable certainty that there’s nothing I can do but follow this.
I might feel miserable at times, but also infinitely blessed to have a passion that burns so fiercely that I can’t force myself to want anything else. Knowing that my soul will not rest until I run to language’s encounter, and it embraces me, and it recognises me, it reassures me - I’ve always known you.
Because I know of their importance. Because in literature, I find healing and I can deliver healing. Through words, I can speak blessings and I can reclaim power. Because it is through His words that I am rescued over and over and over again.
For this second act, I find peace in knowing that of all the lives I could possibly wish to live, this - sitting at the breakfast table, emptying my brain, pouring my thoughts out on this blank page - is the only one I find worthy.
I know I will find a way to use this beautifully, to serve humanity in some way. I am no longer afraid of doing it imperfectly, as long as in it, there’s truth.