Learning to be There

I was recently reading The Comfort Book by Matt Haig and his words about words just stayed with me.

Words don’t capture, they release. Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

That moment when I read this page, I was relieved by my wanting to write something, somewhere, anywhere. If not the blog, then the journal. If not the journal, then just a random piece of paper, nothing really fancy at all. Just write. It’s just that writing in bits and pieces never makes their way to the blog. However, for that moment I am free since my mind becomes clear. When it comes to writing in a blog, I am still at a point where I need to make time. Since I can only put my thoughts in silence, I need that quiet. There’s sometimes very little of it in the day, but definitely it’s not a complaint, I am grateful.

I have been thinking to put this together for a while now. I wanted to put these thoughts out on the paper to release them from my mind. Finally they are out here in their home. This post is mainly for me to reiterate to myself about parenting. What I feel about parenting, not just the roles and responsibilites but the fears and premonitions that comes with it. Everyday it is more of me telling myself about raising a normal child in today’s extraordinary world. A couple of years before I wrote a post on my other blog, how parenting is hard. In the recent times, I have this openness to accept that parenting is hard, but being a child is harder. Being there for your child always, is hardest.

As a parent, I chew on random thoughts every minute of the day. It took me a while to understand what my husband has always said – what will happen will happen. In the name of trying to protect her from everything there is, I hardly let her be. Keeping her in front of my eyes is not called keeping her safe. When I see something I start thinking all that could go wrong in the next 20 years. Just the thought is terrifying.

However, for a minute after I breathe, I tell myself that I am exhausted just thinking about it. I sometimes think my mind is like a social media feed which I keep scrolling endlessly without thinking. The thoughts are not as fascinating as it looks on the feed, but colorful enough to tire my eyes. These are times I realize I’m so out of touch with myself. Time to pour my thoughts out in any piece of paper or let them go to clear them off.

Yesterday while walking back from work, a random thought popped up. How busy I thought I was when I was a college student. Now I wish I had some more fun then. I wish I took a breathe, enjoyed that moment a bit more without the thought of what the future holds. Today what I am doing, where I am, though I am happy – it is nothing close to what I had imagined it to be. I didn’t once think that I need to make friends all over again after or that I will move to a new place. When I try to think about my own relationships, I still find it hard to have conversations with new people. When I talk, there’s very little to start with or so I feel. Adult friendships without motive is rare.

Asking my daughter to just go and talk and make friendships sometimes feels like a harder job in itself. Some children are curious, they ask questions openly. This way there’s no offense taken. That’s far better sometimes than children building a wall stating you’re not allowed in my place. As a parent, I could see how hurtful that behavior is, I put myself in her shoes then. When the parent doesn’t utter a word, it makes me lose trust about the world. However, I always tell my daughter, when you make a friend you’ll know it in your heart. There’s hope somewhere in me still.

We all need someone our age to understand what we go through even if we have a sibling. For someone who’s an only child, then imagine, it’s a lonely world, even if you have parents playing with you. These friends sometime stay with us longer or sometimes the journey is short, but the memories are good. I was a shy kid at school. If not for the two girls who initiated conversations and made me their friends, I would have hardly opened up. I had a lot of cousins at home, so I preferred peace at school, I thought. They both made me realise we all need someone. So many years later, these two girls have been my besties throughout my life.

As a parent, I could feed the child, be there, take care. I can tell her what I think I know, teach her right from wrong, but her way through the world will teach her life more than what we do as parents. For the child to process it all, to absorb it all, it not only takes years. There is a lot of learning for them, yet a lot of unlearning too. These will be only from her experiences she will face. The one question that keeps me going as a parent, Does what I say and what I do match-up?

There will always be external pressures in our life wherever we are. What really has to happen is the change in me, the need to rise up to being a parent. Listening to her world, the way it is, grasping it, being a learner in her world, just learning to be there. It is definitely not easy, with so many new words and lifestyles and cultures to understand. Life today is different for children especially with everything available to them in the internet. Type it and whether you like it or not, you get more than what you want to know. Are they in a position to digest it all. When do they need help, do they know they need help at all? After all who do they have if not us?

It might look like I am available to her too much, but the truth is, me being there is important. As a parent, I have come from being a full-time mother, to a working mother. I love my job, but I always joke about it as a diversion from family business. My career growth is important to me, but being there for my child in today’s world is more important to me now than ever.

After all, we are all she has. And she is all I have. It’s cliche, but right now I am parent, not a friend. Probably, in another 10 years life will be different and she will forget that I was strict with her as a parent, or will remember it was for the best for her – I don’t know. That’s her story to tell, not mine. Today, the only thing I want to do is being there for her. I want her to know only one thing, she is loved, she will always be loved.

Once I read somewhere, in your whole life if you have 5 people who loves you with all their heart, then you are blessed. We want to be her family she could rely on. I don’t know about 5 people, but right now she has only 2 people who she sees all the time and it is so tiring if I am going to be telling her what not to do all the time. I have failed a million times in learning to be there for her, but I could see that I am a little bit better than last year. That’s all that counts for me.

Learning to be there for her has also made me be a bit better with myself. Whenever something happens, I could see that I tell myself, it’s okay and I can get through this one thing at a time. It’s true that children in our life help us learn so much about ourselves through them. I have a really long way to go. However, at this minute being here counts.