4. Accept it! Its time to settle!

By Summaiya Noor Ali

Hello again. I am back in Dubai. My second home. Living my married life. Trying to act like a housewife. I have no idea how they manage to do it. I can barely hold it together on some days, while on other days it feels like I was born to do this.

I have so much time here, but sometimes it feels like I have no time at all. Now it is time to stop with the moping around and love this life. With the beautiful manmade lake by my side. I love the sea, actually I love every body of water. I even have a cycle here, and shops and the Nutella bun from Papparoti (which, by the way, is divine) There is quite a bit here, and it sure feels cosy and I, surprisingly, have called it home already.

But there is no ma here, no amal to beat up or saby to annoy. No immediate family here. It is Rajab, and there is nothing happening to remind us of the months passing by. The days and weeks are a blur, I dont remember dates anymore either. At the risk of sounding ungrateful I never mentioned this. But it is true. It has to come out sooner or later. It’s a different life, where I am not as independent, I do not have a job, I have no sense of achievement, I do not drive here, and I do not have a routine here.

I sleep when I want to, I wake up when I want to. I cook when I want to, and I don’t when I don’t want to. I have home food delivered to my house daily. I do not leave the house without my husband. It is safer here than in Karachi, but I almost always refuse to travel alone. By the way, my experiences here add to this weirdness. I did not know the rush hours and was relying on everyone else to let me know when to leave and when to reach their place. I would always get stuck in the rush hour. I would sleep and wake up in the car twice with nothing to do and get car sick. When I would reach home I would sleep the rest of the day trying to cope with the car sickness. In the same way I was once stranded on a metro station where no taxis would turn up and I stood there for half an hour till I was rescued. So rush hours are bad to say the least. I spend my days watching Friends, How I met your mother, Game of Thrones, Daredevil and these days Full House, which has around 8 seasons, so thats good. I manage to keep myself busy.

I have also boycotted television twice here. Which is sadness in itself since I am known to be the one in my family with the willpower. But then if I don’t have my books and stop myelf from watching television too then I would be bored stiff and probably go to sleep. Actually one day I realized that wasn’t true. I woke up to find no cable and no internet and that’s when this sort of a diary, of never ending whining started. So I write when I have nothing to do. Then I wonder why don’t I consider Content Writing as a job. Hmm. Worth pondering over.

But then I thought of everything that’s happening, and I realized I have also started talking to my one true connection these days. The connection is strongest at night, when there is nothing to see or do and I am trying to sleep but cannot since I wake up late. So during those times I have come to realize a few things. When I have nothing to do, I am extremely unhappy, and when I have nothing to make me feel like I can/have accomplished something I am unhappy. Laundry/washing/cleaning doesn’t cut it anymore. That feels like its required now. Cooking is relatively seldom and hence it still makes me feel good. But I realized I have nothing to do! And so, to add some dark humor and drama into my life I got a stiff neck. A neck so stiff and cramped up that it was hard to swallow, let alone see to my right and left. We went to the doctor who pressed the veins in my neck so hard I almost passed out.

Then over the coming weekend my glasses broke, and amazingly I didn’t have another pair. My lenses turn my eyes all red and watery and itchy, so couldnt wear those. I spent 6 days in 10% vision, which was insane and for the first few days made me thank god for having eyes at all to see blobs of colour, but then it got too much since I become almost handicapped if I do not have my glasses. My numbers are too high. 6.5 and 5.5 I think. 

Since I couldn’t see, I almost fell, where my limbs went flailing around and I stomped my foot too hard by mistake and ending up bursting a few capillaries in my toe. This meant my second smallest toe on the left was became all purple, dark blackish. It was gross and also hurting from time to time.

Then since I couldn’t see anything I banged into an open cabinet the same weekend. That didn’t help my neck too much.

Realization: God has a sense of humor. If I want to mope, he will give me stuff to mope about.