Forgetfulness over forgiveness

Mere domesticity never attracted me. So married life was never for me. But I did crave the closeness of someone who would love and cherish me. The person who showed me this love was unfailingly conventional. So I had little choice but to step into the traditional contract of marriage. With that came its baggage of relations-in-law. And that is all they have remained - relations “in-law”. No emotion goes into the fulfilling of these commitments. I do my duty towards them unfailingly. My sense of duty and responsibility has no doubt raised my status in my husband’s eyes, but have I really got what I wanted from marriage?
Relations by blood have been equally bad. Rather I have no relationship with those who are supposed to be related to me by blood. They are peeved with me because since my father’s death I stood by my mother, without thinking whether she was right or wrong. I just felt that she was my mother and if she was uncomfortable with something I just had to see things her way. In any case my brothers had their life partners and did not have to feel as lonely as my widowed mother did. They had someone’s shoulder to cry on. So I thought I would extend my shoulder for ma to cry on. When I needed a shoulder to cry on, I was quite simply misunderstood. So I thought why bother to turn to people who were anyway too busy setting up things in their lives.
Then my husband came along into my life. I thought I had found someone on whose shoulders I could cry. Years down the line I realized he too needed a shoulder to cry on because his parents thought the worst of him for choosing me. So once again I lent my shoulder. Now I had two different people crying on either shoulder. Then my daughter came along and started to grow up and she also needed a shoulder. God gives us all only two shoulders but never tells us how many people we should accommodate at one time. God never tells us who are the most deserving candidates for a weeping berth on our shoulders. So I just opened my whole being out to my child. Anything for you, my little baby I said. Hence I am her favourite punching bag, milch cow or whatever. Now what?
The other day my mother’s elder son turned up at our place after a longish gap to see how she was being provided for. I realized through his various comments and reactions that he too needed a shoulder to cry on. And I thought I had left him safe and sound with the partner of his choice!!! Of course he didn’t mince words when he told me that I was the villain of the family who had gone and screwed up all the relationships. I do not know how I had stopped him from setting it all right again. I must be villainous in my basic approach to my family by birth. They all hate me. And frankly, I too have no particular liking for them any more. I do not feel even the sympathy I would feel for a dog. I no longer feel a part of the family that my father and mother created.
But I feel less lonely now. I am alone, brought on to this earth through the will of God, no matter which human agency was involved. I stand alone in all that I think and do. Neither past nor future should matter. A fixed destiny has been granted to me. I came to take up some responsibilities and perform some duties. The rest should not matter.
I believe God is with me in any place that He leads me to. He will stand by me. I meant no one to any harm. I meant just to be less trouble to the people around me. If someone thinks of me in a poor light it is his problem. I would like to forgive and forget. God, give me strength.

My way

Life has too many conflicts. How does one make things simpler? By letting bygones be bygones. But when bygones refuse to leave you, you can't do much but slap them in the face. Avoid shameless, unscrupulous, selfish people. Think of God. Think God gives responsibilities and troubles only to those who have the strength to fight. My strength seems to have ebbed. Hoping its a temporary phase. Haven't gone to work the whole of last week. Have to get back on my feet. Get back to work. Develop a philosophy of existence and fight it out. All my past beliefs are somehow erroneous. Got to stop believing in basic goodness of mankind. Then I might get on to the right track. I have to start believing that all that I have done till now in my life was predestined. I could not have done otherwise. To hell with all the people who think I am wrong. So who stopped them from doing what was right. I would have been quite happy if I didn't have to take on the many situations that I had to deal with. When faced with a circumstance that needed some doing, I did it my way. Here rests my case.

Present confusing, Future uncertain

Yesterday a colleague of mine at the college retired. She said she was happy to go. She seemed to accept the end of working life with some amount of relief. But I wonder what she plans to do with the endless hours that are now to follow.

I have been in this job now over eleven years and the way things are going, I can only see the resources of my brain being reduced to nothingness. Surprising, considering I am supposed to be in the academic profession. Here we are supposed to keep our minds alert, our imagination and intellect working full throttle. But such are the circumstances of the academic system that we are trapped in that being a teacher seems no more than the labourer's struggle for existence. And to think I came to this profession because I wanted to be a college teacher!

The academic session starts with a flurry of activity. We get to do some adminstrative work related to admissions. We get to do the paperwork of course. We have no say whatsoever regarding the quality of students we may admit or the number. That is decided by the powers that be in the governing of the institution. Education for all, the cry goes round the battlements and the field is set for the battle of the unions. Literacy for all is fair enough, but higher education for all is a bit of a misguided petition, particularly when I see around me students admitted who do not have the foggiest about what they wish to do with their lives. A degree, somehow, anyhow, with perhaps just the pass marks which does not equip them with any expertise. Moreover these young minds come in with the idea that teachers are their enemies, interested only in the pay packets they receive, not bothered about how much they should teach. There are of course the equivocating influences, some very much from among the teaching clan who are forwarding the interests of the poltitical parties they owe allegience to. In today's academics, politics is the thing. One-up manship is the order, with non-coperation and distrust going side by side. I came into this profession with the ideals that are no doubt old-fashioned now. So upset am I that I have begun to mistrust my own stance. I do my job just as a job. I learn nothing, I do nothing new. The travel to and from the college is sometimes inhumanly uncomfortable, the staff room politics is stifling. But I need the money, so I do my job. I also look forward to my retirement. But I wonder if I will have any ideas about how to pass the hours that I will finally have to myself. Will my imagination revive? Will my creativity revive? Will I remember how I loved to paint, or listen to music, or hang out with friends? Will I able to read books as I could once? The prospects are uncertain and a bit frightening.

Is this what God-gifted life is supposed to be reduced to?