Big city blue...

I have this need to communicate like never before. Or feels that way to me because today is more fresh in the memory than other "have to communicate" moments from the past. I have prided myself on being able to handle a situation. I have longed to be on my own, live independently, as I have always lived with my folks, except for a brief period of 4-5 months when I worked in a different city from where I lived, and loved every moment of it. I scraped and scratched, and yet, those were the happiest days, the most fulfilling, and brought out the best in me, since nobody including myself did believe that I had it in me to pull off something like that.

Armed with that knowledge, and with the desire to live on my own, I accepted this job opportunity that brought me to this city. Excited but extremely apprehensive, I began the journey. I can safely say that the beginning isn't what I was hoping it would be like. On the job front, I suppose I will survive and eventually begin to like what I am required to do. Otherwise, in a city teeming with millions and millions, I have never felt more alone. Until now, I never did fully appreciate the sentiment "feeling lonely in a crowd". My heart goes out to all those people who have felt this way, as now is when I can empathise with what they were trying to tell the world.

I live for the moment at a flat of the friend of a relative of mine. It does not feel like home. Possibly the biggest reason why I am oh so lonely in such a crowd. Maybe it will change. Maybe it will continue to remain this way. Maybe I am simply destined to read my evenings and weekends away, and long for the working week to begin to be among strangers, but in an environment of familiarity.

I can safely say that I have never been the sort who went over board in forging friendships. I say this since back home, I was quite alone too. But the difference I find lies in the fact that I was alone in familiar terriritory. Locked up in my room, driving in my car listening to Garth Brooks and Co, sitting at a pub near home and sipping beer and smoking away without the slightest feeling of self consciousness, all of these times, although being alone like I am in this new city, it rarely made me want to weep, or reach out, or connect to somebody, anybody.

I have to say that people have been quite accommodating here. A friend who asked her friend, sent out a SOS to her friends in this city, and being the kind of city this is, with it's unique kind of inhabitants, I received emails and phone calls giving me the contacts of brokers who could assist in helping me find a roof to put over my head. I was amazed. It has left a lasting impression. I must say that some even volunteered to show me around the city, help me shop or set up residence, and to take me out for coffee, or to even put me in touch with other people so as to make this journey of transferring oneself to a new city, especially this city, a lot more pleasant, a lot more easy on the mind and heart. I am grateful to every one of them.I also understand that there is that much anybody can do, since they have their lives to lead and I cannot intrude upon their time, although that is precisely what I did in that insane need to connect, and reach out. They tolerated me, and for that I am grateful.

Time will tell how this will pan out. I can do my bit though by accepting that things are bound to be this way for sometime to come, or for ever here, and make up my mind about what I want to do about it......time will tell....if I have it in me to stick it out...or if I will break and dash back to being alone, but in familiar spaces.