Following the challenge my friends and colleagues came up with I am trying to articulate the now in my life, which feels like a never-ending soap opera…it sounds funny, but trust me it has so much drama that my liver is now in intensive therapy.
The now: I have one word for how I feel and that is confused, and this is coming from the definition of OCD, control freak, bleach white perfect cleanliness, etc. person…you get the point.
The background:
I have made a decision almost an year ago to come and work in another country, and not just any country, but an Arab one. I have been warned and reprehended because of the country I chose, but I decided to do it anyway and I came.
The story:
I did my best and I worked my ass off (pardon my french) and all I got in return was shit and humiliation and injustice and threats and pointing fingers and drama and written notices and degrading scowls in the office in front of all the staff and complaints from people who were not doing their jobs and needed a scapegoat. Apparently this is a normality in this part of the world.
Because everything has to balance I had met an amazing person. The only person I had met in my whole life who knew how to make me happy without me saying a word or asking for anything. We were happy, friends, lovers, best friends, partners in crime, we love the same coffee and people smiled when they saw us together.
I used to live in a house with 8 amazing guys, who each in their own time moved out and left me there with people who used to do laundry at 2:00 am on a school night or cook pasta at 5:00 am or smoke in their room who shared my ac ventilation system at 4:00 am.
You can see that everything I wrote so far is at past tense. Because everything is in the past. I still have the shitty job, but I became more ambitious and determined to find a better job, one that i deserve, one that can reward me and develop me and challenge me. The amazing person no longer makes me happy, but I still have amazing moments and memories and the fact that I now know what happy feels like. I no longer live with the people who had no daylight activities and I found an amazing apartment to live in with a great flat mate and all this because I remembered who I am…and I am not a quitter, I am not a person who despairs, I am not somebody who falls down. I am a fighter, I seize the now and I make things happen. I don’t know what no means and I am positive and unbreakable and I know what experience taught me so many times: nothing lasts forever, you get only what you work for, what you think you attract and NOW is as good a time as any, just that later you might not get the same opportunity.
And I was thinking if I was original enough to realise that the other word for now (“present”) actually means gift, which is exactly how I feel: I receive a gift everyday, a gift of time and power that only I have to live and to make a difference.
Yes! Strong!
Both respect and love <3