Finding meaning and connection

 Recent days have made me reflective and I spend a lot of time looking back on better, younger , more hopeful days; yet more anxious days, days in which my emotions ran high, my expectation was higher and my inner peace was lacking. To combat my anxiety and feelings of self existential angst, I had started a blog to enable me to express my feelings and reflect out aloud. In the years that followed life had been full and busy and i had forgotten about this blog and it sat untended and unread.

I remembered this blog recently and went back to check my past posts, the lonely space on the web which is mine alone. 

The feeling was eerie, as if the me that was present in that moment was there no more, as if i was looking back to a moment in time, a moment that will never return and  I felt an overwhelming wave of nostalgia and sadness. I was reminded of an insightful comment by my older daughter when she was about 6 years old. She has always been a thoughtful child and a deep thinker and in this moment she told me how she feels disconnected from her old self. This comment caught my attention and i asked her to elaborate. She very articulately explained that each part of her life was a piece of her but since they were moments lost and gone by she could never reclaim them, hence she was not complete without these moments. In her exact words " I feel that i have lost myself and i want to find myself and put myself together again"

I was amazed at her ability to not only process her own complex feelings but also to express them so clearly. I was also deeply moved by the fact that i have felt like this before and have always felt a deep seated anxiety and restlessness which has never been resolved to date. 

I feel that somehow maybe returning to this blog and reactivating it will not only connect me with who I was and what i felt in those few posts but give me some continuity and somewhere to start from. So again I will make a commitment to myself to blog regularly and reflect on instances and feelings in life which are so fleeting and are forgotten not long after their inception. 

So much has happened and so much has changed. it will be hard but i will find that link , in the blog and in myself. 

Playing the piano

Learning to play an instrument as an adult is hard. As an adult learner, i feel i get caught in minor snags and areas of confusion that prevent me from completing a piece fluently. The process of learning a piece is a immensely rewarding one but at the same time it is an arduous task and one that requires months of dedicated practice and effort. However the pace of my life varies and while there are weeks where i find myself devoting a lot of time to practicing piano, there are times when I'm rushed off my feet and unable to concentrate for ten minutes at a time.This bothers me as i love playing the piano and want to practice with much more discipline and consistency.
Also I find that i am increasingly tending to avoid areas of difficulty such as sight reading of very high and low notes and rhythms that i find difficult to grasp. instead I work on pieces and areas that i am already confident about. This does not help in the long run.
I think part of the problem is that i play for self fulfilment rather than for any other purpose. I tend not to play in front of anyone because i find that nervousness gets in the way. If there was some pressure that would propel me to work on the weak areas , pressure such as playing for a small public audience i may work harder to fix the parts that need fixing. Working on the same pieces over and over boosts my knowledge of these pieces but does not expand my repetoire.
Maybe if i can change my attitude towards the piano and make it a priority rather than something i do when i have time my piano playing would improve significantly.
Are there any adult learners out there who can advise me on what tips and techniques for practice help them?

How things change

I'm back and now its 2015! wow how time has flown.  so much has changed in a good way! I just celebrated my 36th birthday.  I think this has been the first birthday in the last few years where i have not been recovering from a miscarriage. The last two birthdays were difficult for this reason and i was unable to accept moving on to another year. the panic , the terror and the pain of pregnancy loss was difficult to manage emotionally. This year  I felt light hearted, relaxed and was able to enjoy the day with family and friends .
Back to the change, i can only attribute the changes i have gone through to a more positive frame of mind. Somehow the angst and bitterness i had felt for the last few years has melted away and I no longer feel defensive and angry at life, i feel purely grateful, grateful for the years I have lived, the wonderful family i have, my beautiful little girl who is now eight years old, crazy, vibrant and fun, grateful for new friends made and people who care.  I feel grateful for music, books, my pets, grateful for a healthy mind and body and beyond all grateful to be me. For the first time i feel that i am happy to be myself.
So this time I'm back with a renewed determination to blog regularly. Lets see how this goes!

I felt oddly content today. With everything that has been going on in my life, it was strange to feel so good. I have been so angry, so bitter, i started feeling horrible and mean, feeling negative feelings about people and things who have never really hurt me. But today? It was different! really different. I don't know why. maybe it was the prospective interview, maybe it was a inner feeling that the situation can be resolved somehow. Either way i felt good about myself.
Starting from the morning when i dropped my daughter off at school , to the morning spent applying for jobs and to the evening when i felt lighthearted enough to skip with my daughter to the grocery store despite the dark and the cold.
Maybe its the feeling of Christmas in the air, the lights in the streets, the feeling of coziness in the homes, the crisp freshness in the air. Cold has always left me feeling happy and content. Even the winters in Canada were not enough to put me off and as for the dark winter days in Sweden? I remember them with a feeling of softness and nostalgia. the soft white snow on the ground, the light sky, the dim glow of the street lamps, the wonderfully fresh smell in the air, pulling my daughter to dagis in a sled, walking around town, the candles in peoples in windows, the world seemed right.
When i went back home to my country, the harsh intense heat was an immediate damper on my mood. All of a sudden i felt grouchy, antisocial and as if i didn't want to leave the house. Then came the massive feeling of depression at being confined to the house due to my own reluctance to face the heat. I have never been the kind of person to just ' deal with it'  as my mum always told me to do. so instead i just felt dark and depressed and found it more and more difficult to see what was positive in my life
 Is it possible to be allergic to sunlight? And am i crazy to feel this way? I guess weather plays a huge role in ones mood. However i know its supposed to be the opposite way around.
I wonder...but then again i wouldn't change a thing 

anywhere but here! anyone but me

So I'm back after a long time!  I just can't seem to get the hang of maintaining a blog, I started this blog with high expectations of faithfully maintaining it and establishing blogging contacts. However i never got around to it. Somehow life came in the way. Life with all the anxiety, depression, feelings of spiritual emptiness and loss of meaning. So i'm back again, back to this blog so that i can put my mixed emotions and feelings into words, maybe in order to understand them better myself.
I'm 34 now and so terribly depressed and unhappy with my life so far. I don't know why i can't accept things the way they are. Why am i  so stationary in terms my emotional, professional and social development. Why do I carry with me such rage and bitterness in my heart.
I have a beautiful daughter, a wonderful and supportive family, so why am i just not grateful? I follow blogs of fellow moms, I realize that others have faced greater hardships than me, have faced these hardships with much more grace and humor and honesty than i am able to.
Rather than being able to change myself and accept my lot in life,I cling to old grudges, let go of friendships and put up more and more barriers.
More than anything I feel bitterness at what others have accomplished and at my own ineptness and for that I feel hatred for myself, I feel that sometimes I would be better off dead, than i think of my daughter with sunshine and mischief in her eyes and i banish such thoughts from my mind.
I have had a lot of time for soul searching lately and i have realize something crucial, something that can explain my bitterness , my feelings of inadequacy and rage and a increasing feeling of being isolated and alone in my negativity, I thoroughly dislike myself, who I am and what I stand for, somewhere I  feel that i want to erase my identity and who i am and be someone else.
I want to change so bad but am so deep in that i can't fathom how i can get out.

Milestones

Today has been a momentous day! My daughter participated in a school function celebrating independence day! She had a line to say on stage and she said it loud and clear and well! She also looked absolutely adorable in her braids and her new shalwar kameez! I was proud , not to mention she worked really well in class even though she was taking a trip with her daddy to Lahore to visit the paternal grandparents and was super excited!!
Mama's so proud! She went off all excited later that afternoon with her little pink suitcase with her daddy. First trip without mama, momentous occasion for all of us , bitter sweet for me knowing that my little girl is growing up but also knowing that now she is ok without me, i have not been able to part with her for much of her little life but now she is branching out , making friends, enjoying cousins, looking upto her teachers and generally being able to have her own unique relationships with others!!
While i miss her , i am happy she is able to have a special impromptu vacation with her daddy , grandparents and cousin who she loves! AND mama got to finish watching Firefly and reading a book she has been wanting to read for a while!!
Here's to many other milestones in her little life that i look forward to seeing! Wonder what the next will be! Maybe riding a bike without training wheels? something she has been practicing this week??

Why is living with a five year old so hard?

When my daughter was born five years ago, an adorable wide eyed baby who i would have given my life for  (and still would) my life revolved around her. I was the mama that spent every minute of everyday with her and was reluctant to relinquish responsibility to anyone else. I just wanted to be the perfect mama, i read to her since she was a baby, talked to her incessantly, played with her and cuddled her. She was my world, my guiding light , everything i did was for her. I could dress her without a battle, feed her without struggle, she went where i wanted to go, i planned activities i thought she would enjoy, heck ! i even managed to survive two years of looking after her alone while i was a student in Sweden without losing my cool
At five , she is a feisty , independent child who does what she wants, when she wants and how she wants! She has a crazy temper and angers in less than a second!
 I love her to death but how do i manage to get her to listen to me without going crazy in the process? And now she wants a sibling! any guarantees that a second child will be easier??

Sometimes i just feel like hiding away somewhere where life isn't a persistent battle of wills. Getting her to do her homework, get dressed, eat and do what she needs to do requires hours of persuasion, coaxing and assertion of my own authority.
 i need super nanny now!! right now!!  Kids!!

M's quotes of the day! while chasing puppy! " i'll get you now!! dog breath!!
                                                                 "you are entering the house of pain"