before I go.

doodles I did on the table of a cool cafe:
"the clouds are upside down, follow the wind"

There are my things littered on the floor before a red-shelled suitcase: two camera bags, some packets of dried meat my grandmother had bought for me a week ago, a few bottles of nail polish, a tiara hairband I’d bought for a young girl cousin but never gave to any; most of my clothes are tucked into my suitcase and a few I still need time to first sort out. Everyone asks me about packing:

‘Have you started packing?’

‘Shouldn’t you be packing already?’

‘You still aren’t packing?!’

And I sit here and lie around there, sometimes trying to make my way through books I hope to finish before I leave and yesterday, taking lengthy naps trying to quench a dry headache. I’m as cool as a crab in its shell near the water’s edge at dawn and others are disturbed sand all around me. I think to myself that it’s one thing to worry for themselves, and a totally different other to worry for me. It’s unnecessary.

I went to take a shower, and found that the water was cold. In a good way though. The day had switched between iron hot sun and summer storms. I thought about how that might be one of my last cold showers for a while, before I return to stark cold UK where the very act of stripping for a shower brings shivers. 

I remember how I’d been wanting to write a post on maturing right even before my summer holidays had started, but now it’s approaching the end and even though I have most of it in my head, I hadn’t actually sat down to produce it yet. So I guess here it is. 

It’s slightly strange in a way, because if my younger self had caught a whiff of this change, she probably would’ve dismissed it with a swift fly of her hand. Yet, I know that she now understands. After all, it’s her that has been the one who went through a journey and learnt. 

Realisation came subtly. It wasn’t something that hit me suddenly, rather, it was small growths accumulated over the days before I realised how much the things, movies, songs and even books, that I had once used to define ‘me’ didn’t anymore. With the development in taste, I’ve taught myself to ask more from me. I honour value and quality so much more over figures and quantity so much more. Then the moment came when this thought surfaced and softly, it told me, I think this is what maturing feels like. I rolled it around my mind, like my tongue rolls a piece of candy about, over and over again, trying to decide upon its validity. It wasn’t that I’d been immature before when in fact, I’d often been told by adults and teachers that I possessed a maturity beyond my age; yet to me, I had always wanted to retain my inner child. I didn’t want it to die off, like so many others I’d read and heard of. And maybe it’s because I’ve now also learnt that I’d mainly wanted to retain that child in me because it had meant being open-minded to all things especially towards the attitude of learning, and realised that I could bring that along with me throughout my life that maturing has adopted a new look from my point of view. It really isn’t that difficult, what others call ‘holding on’, although it only had seemed that way because most people know of it differently, because it isn’t really putting a string on something and pulling it through time but recreating it over and over again, moment by moment. The same way those romantic love survives which isn’t so much of ‘being in love all the time’, but falling in love over and over again with the same person. Except that it doesn’t have to be restricted to that kind of love, but love with any and all aspects of life.

So I’ve lived my summer moment by moment. I have discovered the depths of true perfect timing, all things in good time. Three months fitted like a cap upon a bottle, it was just enough. I’ll tell you more about my summer soon, for I have things to tell and photos to share; but right now, I tell myself it’s still summer until I fly.