Return.

It's been a long time since I wrote for this website.

I stopped because it was so emotionally draining. I felt stuck - as though no matter what, I wasn't really going anywhere with my thoughts.

But almost a year later... I finally have retrospect to cup in my hands and stare into.

And it's difficult. Because I feel like I've made it through some sort of marathon and now it's the cooling off period before I begin training for the next one. I don't want to look back but lately things have been welling up on me again and I realise, I can't put it off much longer.

I've often wondered what the point is. Of writing. This. Hello one year silence.

I gave up when I realised it was limiting me on what I would say and write. I realised I was seeking to categorise meaningfulness rather than just being meaningful.

Over the last year I have made great attempts to reconcile difficulties between my family and I. Well, actually... more just the difficulties with I.

I have worked and failed and continued to work hard on saving, regaining, building and nurturing my relationship with my boyfriend - the only man in my life I have ever felt this way towards.

If I may go off in a tangeant: he completes me... in more ways than one. My whole being recognises him, needs him, feels him. My past beckons towards him, my future feels present with him.

It's been tough. It's been difficult. It's been eye-opening.

I realised foremost that my difficulties in accepting my boyfriend's love and expressing healthily my feelings towards him, for him, and for things that happen around him (and I) was just that - the bracketed "I". I had difficulties with myself, and most of those originated through assumptions I had made through my family and the behaviour I had internalised through not wanting to be rejected by them.

Oh dear. I hear a sigh in my own head. I'm not confessing, I am being self-therapeutic. I am alliterating and proliferating my realisations in the hopes that, through Internet publishing, I will somehow imprint and publish my revelations into myself and , therefore, never have to wonder again why I feel so shit.

Sometimes.

My cousin T and I had a discussion recently about how our parents raised us. To my surprise - which it ought not have been - I realised we both had a lot to attribute to the way our father's were raised and 'couraged through life and how, in their misguided attempts at parenthood, indeed screwed us up. Perhaps.

Not that it is worth pointing fingers. He and I, I should imagine and hopefully gathered, are quite similar in the way we ram our way through life without thought nor real respect to the social Bengali collective. They don't help us, we've concluded, because they've never offered to.

Ah, something more relevant perhaps: a Bengali collective that doesn't offer help but waits to be asked for help. And imagine the complexities of ettiquette. I've examined many Bengali, Muslim girls who walk in packs and smile confidently amongst themselves. And yet, I realise... none of them will be my friend. I'll never want their help because to ask for it would be to admit vulnarability, to open the door to gossip and humiliation... to effectively ask to be rejected. Which, believe it or not, a large number of people take great pleasure in doing.

Forgive me if I chose not to ask.

It's not an important point... it's just an observation, a comment, a quirk of the eyebrow. I chose a long time ago not to hang out with the girlies and that was, ironically, largely down to my parents.

They never encouraged me to socialise, despite my obvious affinity with people. They encouraged me in lost and confused ways towards a future they assumed would just happen. I still.... I feel bitter about it.

For what I had regarded as a strength in me over 19 years of absurd insulation, has turned into my most painful attribute. I'm trapped behind my own guards, protecting myself with spikes and barbs aimed inwards. The fact I can acknowledge this now represents a shift in my anger. I'm no longer confused about why I am so sad, why my family and I are so charged with static.

If I can diffuse myself, can I diffuse them? I wonder.

... Is that what I should be aiming for?

The only person I really care about is him, anyway - the man who makes me say the words "I love you" and feel completely naked. If by working out my differences with myself (and therefore my family) I can offer my boyfriend something worthwhile... can feel his acceptance whole-heartedly...

There really is no question about it.

Observe the determination.

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