Surfacing – closer to life

I’m not down with this. I come up for air only every two months allowing myself to be the person I think I am, rather than the person I need to be. It’s starting to hurt.

I fell in love in Cape Town and not with the city. This might not be entirely on this individual’s merits, though: it might just be because it was the first even semi-intimate human contact I’d had in months.

I have a bad habit from my upbringing: I have a poorly defined sense of what’s good for me. I take notions transiently from whoever’s in reach. This one was very different from any others I’d met; an artist: expressive and emotive, although quite self-absorbed. Beyond that (which I think is a result of the career) I found a lot of substance to a weak physical presence. I was indirectly and unintentionally led into feeling the moment. I followed willingly.

I’ve not done this for a long time. I’ve come to pride myself on my ability to detach emotion from the situation. Here it’s absolute necessity not only to stay happy, but to function. The fact is that I’m lonely – professionally and socially isolated. Why feel? What good will it do? More significantly, being here is an exasperation of what I’ve felt for a long time: I feel very much alone and have done so in most places I’ve lived.

One part of me alienates the other. Muslim friends and family wouldn’t accept a significant part of my life. Many struggle with the fact that I’m a practising Muslim and lead a very separate life from my family – or worse, they pity it. Muslims I know like me are very few and given their minority in a minority status, when we get down the person we just don’t get along. If you don’t drink, smoke or do any drugs, you tend not to fit in at parties. In most social gatherings people are demonstrably uncomfortable if you’re not drinking. If you don’t have an expensive enough bike you’ll be shunned when trying to join a cycling club. If someone is attracted to you and you can’t reciprocate, interaction is very awkward. If you don’t like football you won’t have anything to talk to other guys about. If you don’t watch TV you’ll have nothing to talk to colleagues about.

The biggest contributor to my alienation, though, has always been my disdain. I’ve considered interactions or friendships completely unsustainable if there’s something not right. I passed judgement based on someone’s single fault – whatever it may be and often far less serious than one of many of mine. I passed judgement on countries on an uninformed, assumed impression. Money mattered too much.

I learned to occupy a lonely space when a teenager. I was 15, foreign, thin, awkward and trying to find some way to express the misery and regret that was almost consuming me – it was largely teenage angst, but there was bit more to it. I expressed myself then mostly by listening to music. It hurt, but not as much as hearing that my father would refuse to speak to me a few years later. My father’s disowning me was the most painful thing that I experienced. It was 8 years ago, now. I survived by not feeling the pain.

So I progressed in life: clear, specific, reasoned, objective. Here I am.

I was unarmed to interact with someone so emotive in Cape Town. Maybe it was the nerves involved in sitting opposite someone I think I liked, but nothing I thought of could be called deep. I felt bland, plain, shallow, boring, clinical, cynical, petty, sullen, stunted, combative, sterile, dispassionate and monotone. I felt genuine envy for someone with such a strong integration into a culture, a belonging to something, and being amongst a community of friends.

We left things ambiguously – or rather dispassionately. Why get caught up if we’re in different countries? If not being together is the answer, what does it matter what we’re feeling, if we have any questions or with any of the other bullshit in-between?

Actually, it matters because stunting it hurt. It matters because here what do I have? Am I growing more literate, more informed, am I meeting new people ? To a degree, but I can’t grow in the ways I want and I’m certainly not integrating. I can fool myself into thinking I belong to something by sitting in a mosque, but in reality I can’t make an effort at friendships. I can’t make an effort with this one. Life is on hold again.

I’ve forgotten how unhappy I was 10 months ago in London. 10 months ago I’d forgotten how miserable I was when in the bush. I need to write things down more – hence this slightly more personal (and perhaps whingy) entry.

Life here is easier in many ways, or rather, I exonerate myself more easily from the blame of feeling lonely, detached or alienated. That is a significant relief. But an easier and more sustainable solution might have been to just get over it and continue living a real life in London.

I want to get closer to living and move back to London. This time I’ll unpack some boxes rather than keeping them ready to move again. I might hang some things on my wall. I’ll make myself a facebook profile. I’d like to buy a house and a car. Maybe they’ll even grant me a credit card…

Ah, who am I kidding? I’d get bored after a few months. I still have the attention span of a gnat and back in London I’d have a lot less to bitch, moan and write about. Actually I’m blessed for having a stable job and good income, insulated from the global economic meltdown, and to have good enough health to be left with a decision of where to go and what to do. That’s something to be happy for.

Ok, back to work. Dive, dive, dive…