Restart

Bismillah.

Being on a very long hospital leave has caused me to suffer a lot medically but also led me to think a lot about my life.

At this coming age of 37, I still don’t know a lot of things.

But I’ve learned to be more grateful to the Almighty.

With that gratefulness comes an understanding of why I am where I am right now. At the same time, my eyes are opened to the bigger world that is out there.

I think for the longest time my heart has been closed and very cold, especially since my divorce. To be honest, it has not been easy to go back to the warm past version of me. There is a lot to unpack from this sentiment, but I will skip it for now.

Lately, I’ve been getting unexpected messages from a person I know and I person I don’t think I know on Telegram. Then there is a DM on my Threads from someone I don’t know either, but he had slid into my Instagram DM previously. It’s like all these people can smell my emotional availability. All I know is all of this started happening after I kinda threw my hands up in the air and just surrendered to His Will.

What is written for me will never miss me and what is not written for me will never reach me.

I would say although it looks like I gave up on life, I would say it’s more of me detaching myself from it.

Because I have finally understood that my life is not my property. It is my responsibility.

I realised now that I have been approaching everything in life with that sense of responsibility. When I like someone, I make the effort like I am fulfilling a love duty.

Because why not? When you decided to knock on the door of someone’s heart, you’re essentially telling the person that you’re ready with what it takes to love them. Unfortunately, many a times the people I loved were not ready or able to love me back the same way. Worse is they still kept me around because they were not ready to let me go either.

In retrospect, I am proud of the ways I have loved them because my ways showed me the ways I deserve to be loved and more importantly, showed how much I loved myself that I was able to extend that love to them. No regrets in that aspect but I do regret that I have not found someone who has been able to love me the same way.

I felt that regret the most when I started making the hospital trips earlier in the year and when I was first hospitalised last month. I basically went to the hospital alone to for the pre-surgery tests and for the ward registration and during my stay, only my family and my boss visited. It was a huge contrast to when my ex-husband broke his ankle. From the 995 call to the post-op appointments, I was with him throughout. Even the nurses were worried about me staying in the ward with other men while my ex was whisked away into the OT that they advised me to wait at the common area instead. Oh, how I wished I had a partner who was like me. My ex was hospitalised for 2 weeks and I brought him around the hospital facilities. The waffle shop, the smoking corner, and even the hairdresser’s. All his nurses and ward mates were stunned to see him return with a haircut and they were very much impressed. Alas, I had to go through the hospitalisation period without a dedicated partner. It would have been nice to have someone bring me out of the ward and roam about for a bit. I think it would have been easier for me to manage the pain.

I’m not the world’s best lover and there’s still a lot of things that I have to work on, but I know I can work on myself happily with or without a partner.

I used to dream of being a homemaker under a roof with a lovely husband and many many children. For now, it remains a dream as it looks like I’ve taken on the trajectory of being a careerwoman, something which I have been avoiding as I find it antithetic to being a homemaker. I just wanted to stay home and bake shit and raise some kids and not think about the rest of the world. Unfortunately, now, I find myself running a multi-million dollar sport business and having to lead a team and make critical decisions.

So many responsibilities. I think that is why I am colder now and that is how I shall restart my life.

And Allah is Al-Mutakabbir, The Dominant One. -MM