Christmas List – cont.

Ugg boots: I have always had a soft corner for these. I knowthey are stumpy and ridiculous-looking. But that is the point. And right now Iam stumpy and ridiculous-looking. So what better time to complete the look?

It turns out, however, that I am too cheap to actually buy the real thing, even on discount. Besides, I don’t want to spend the earth on a pair of ugly, if comfortable, shoes that I can only use casually (or to work when pregnant because pregnancy excuses everything). So I decided to opt for the fake option, of which there are many around.

Finally, on New Year’s Eve, I decided I had had enough to looking ridiculous in ballet flats – my hips and belly are enormous and my jeans – one of two pairs of trousers that fit me – taper off at the bottom (yes, I bought the cheapest maternity jeans I could find) making me look really weird. So, I decided to buy the fake Uggs available in the shops in the mall downstairs. (And I mean literally downstairs… my apartment sits atop a small mall which sits atop an MTR station).

Unfortunately, the lazy ass in one of the shops had decided to close that day. Never mind, I didn’t like that guy anyway. My decision made for me, I headed to shop no. 2 for a pair of grey Uggs (or whatever). I had been unsure about whether grey was the way to go but now, well, I had no choice and both V and I agreed that my appearance was much improved by the chunky footwear. All thrilled, I headed home with my new boots.

It seems, however, that I am not destined to own a pair of Uggs (or faux-Uggs). All dressed up for the New Year’s Eve do at a friend’s place, I slipped on the shoes only to have the elastic clasp snap in my hand. So basically my new boots were broken before I had even worn them, giving a new meaning to breaking them in. Down we went to the shop, only to be told they would exchange but didn’t have my size in stock. Bah!

Finally, after doing a round of the mall and finding no other shoes that worked – Chinese people have small feet! – we headed back to the shop and chose another pair of cheap boots. Which I have to say I’m very happy with. They vastly improve my appearance making me wonder why I spent a whole month looking stupid without them. 

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Resolutions – 4

This is a typical one. Thou shalt not procrastinate. Themore time I have on my hands, the more I jump from one task to another. I callit multi-tasking but it could well be ADD. I need to make myself finish a taskat work before clicking another window.

Like the religion one, this one is a not a priority. Justsomething to keep in mind. Going by my activities of the past day, however, it’s not off to a good start.

Resolutions – 3

This Christmas I went for Mass after over a year, or has itbeen two? I’m not religious. I pick and choose what parts of religion I want tofollow. For much of my adult life, I have picked Christmas, Easter and the weddingsof friends as my mass-going days. But since Benji, I haven’t done even that.

We didn’t do anything for Christmas this year except go tochurch with Benji. He stayed quiet for some of the singing but tended to wantto run around and V did the needful. This is quite a cliche because in India, you always see the dads running around with the babies while the mums stay inside devoutly bearing the spiritual burden for the family. But it works for us because V cannot actually remember the last time he sat through a whole Mass and I do not see the point of a truncated Mass.

I loved the Mass. As I grew older, I realised that thevalue of Mass for me is in the very things that I used to scorn as a child andwhich adults would tell me was the point – the ritual of it, the sameness, the repetitionof words that have been repeated for time immemorial. There is a peace in that repetitionthat goes beyond the meaning of the words.

Recently, on IHM’s blog, I got embroiled in a big debate onthe ‘benefit of religion for women’. Mainly, I had a lot of time on my handsand got bored with what everyone else seemed to be saying. I find the smugness ofthose who don’t believe as boring as the fervour of those that do. I find thestandard arguments of religion as patriarchy, religion as war-mongering,religion as the source of all evil optimistic at best and unimaginative andstale at worst (or maybe vice versa). I went through that phase in my teens and now I am more respectful of other people’sopinions, even their follies and delusions if one wants to see religion assuch. I agree that religion has propped up patriarchy, that it has been the cause of war – or at least the excuse for it; the cause of war is generally a quest for power. Organised religion is about power but at the individual level it is also about other things and I think it’s time we look into those as well.

I believe in the irrational and that everything cannot beexplained. I am not against a good placebo. I am amused by people’s easy acceptance of explanations under thebanner of science that they probably understand even less than religiousexplanations. It seems like a new version of the Emperor’s New Clothes. If it ispeer-reviewed it must be true. And the truth is what we must know, even at thecost of beauty.

Anyway, this is not about religion or science but aboutresolutions. I like sitting in a church occasionally. I like losing myself insongs about good intentions. I like the performance of the ritual and therepetition of it. Why am I not doing this more? So I will. I hope. 

Resolutions – 2

The Chinese are fond of telling spouses thatthey look like each other. What seems like an absurd and possibly offensiveremark to people of other cultures makes perfect sense to the Chinese. Byvirtue of living together for so many years, people begin to resemble oneanother, they say. Looking alike is the end result of a long and strongmarriage. If an entire culture can accept that spouses begin to take on thephysical characteristics of each other, how much more likely is it that spouseswill take each other’s emotional timbre and habits, not just in terms ofadapting to another person but becoming like another person?

How I have changed over the years has begun tointerest me of late because it is so obvious to me that I have changed. I caneven clearly see the changes that are attributable to V, the ones thatliterally are V.

Some of them are for the good:
1. I am moredecisive
2. I am better atnegotiating the corporate workplace, strategizing instead of being idealistic
3. I don’t make such a mess of a toilet
4. I will hopefullybe in control of my bank account.
5. I think before Ispeak

And others, not so much. I realised recentlythat I have been playing a kind of emotional tit-for-tat in my marriage. Inorder to demonstrate to V how the things he does that he refuses to change hurtme, I started doing them myself. Some of these ways of responding and beinghave become part of me. The unfortunate thing, though, is that in adopting themI killed some of the best parts of who I was – the empathetic one, the one wholistened, the one who pampered someone who is sick, the easygoing one. UnlikeV, who still has his good points intact, I seem to have lost all of mine. WhatI am left with is a hard, bitter shell of a person. I no longer like who I amand neither does V. And as a strategy, tit-for-tat didn’t work because I don’tthink he got the point anyway.

So I have now decided I have to thaw myself outand unravel some of the habits I’ve formed over the past two years. I have to somehowget back the great things about me I’ve repressed to the point of annihilation inorder to just make a point. It’s going to be hard but I think I can do it. Some of those qualities are still there, buried deep down, I just have to practice being them again. 

Resolutions

My birthday has always been a time for me to reflect on where my life is going. But this year I ignored my birthday so New Year is going to serve that purpose. I’ve had a couple of realizations in the past week that I want to put down so I don’t lose sight of them.

Some time ago I wrote this post the point of which was basically how the environment you live in can influence you and how one needs to be vigilant and proactive in not absorbing the worst of the environment around you – and how some environments make that harder than others.

Recently, I have had to face that I have absorbed some not-so-positive things from living in Hong Kong. I have become one of the Impassives – the kind of person that turns a blind eye and doesn’t volunteer help unless asked. A few days ago while getting into the turnstile in the MTR, the woman in front of me dropped her pen and didn’t notice. In my previous life, in India, I would have picked it up and gone after her and given her the pen. I didn’t. I glanced at the pen and then swiped my card and carried on. Granted, at this stage in my pregnancy, it’s a little hard for me to bend over and to run after anyone and then I’d have the hassle of communicating in gestures (because she was clearly not one of the English-speaking ones nor did she look friendly) that she had dropped her pen. But I should have done it. I didn’t because it is so normal in Hong Kong not to. Nobody does it. I decided then and there that I need to make an effort to counteract this tendency to not get involved even in the most minor way.

Yesterday, on the MTR, the seat next to me freed up and a little boy sat down while his mother stood in front of him. Then the seat on the other side of me freed up. In India, I would move up so the mother and son could sit together. People in Hong Kong don’t do this. It’s not their problem. But this time I moved. Such a small thing and yet, I had become a person who would not consider even the most minor inconvenience to myself.

Living in Hong Kong has perils for me because I am naturally anti-social. I am very comfortable moving among people who don’t make eye-contact, who don’t indulge in the usual pleasantries, who don’t interfere in other people’s lives. But even I know that in indulging in this kind of behaviour there is a line one crosses after which one becomes a society of automatons. The faces of people on the MTR are not only impassive they look dull and unhappy. I realised I don’t want to be one of them. So I must force myself to react, to smile, to catch people’s eye, to wish my neighbours good morning.

That’s my first resolution for the coming year. When out on the street, be the nice one.

I am turning into a Smug Married

For me, the epitome of the Smug Married is Magda in Bridget Jones’s Diary (because, of course, my life is patterned on that book) and I think I am turning into her. [Why, though, does Magda have such an ugly name? Then, again, Bridget it hardly ideal either so maybe there is no nomenclature discrimination against Smug Marrieds here and I am just being over-sensitive.]

Anyway, there is this scene in BJD where Bridge is on the phone with Magda and she keeps punctuating the conversation with such exclamations as “in the potty!” (addressed to her child, who is obviously running around diaperless and ready to deposit a turd on the carpet… well, obvious to other SMs anyway). And then, on the weekend, I did just that. Was talking to a friend on the phone about such adult and intellectual stuff as why art is good for the soul and suddenly started hissing “not there, not there!” and other directions at Benji who was trying to open a cabinet in the bathroom while my friend tried to make sense of it all. The weird thing is she didn’t actually get that I was talking to Benji and said “oh, you mean not in Hong Kong” thereby proving how big the gulf between SMs and Singletons really is (though she is not actually single but just ‘no kids’). An SM would immediately know that the “not there” was meant for the kid and not part of the conversation. Finally, in typical Magda-esque fashion the conversation ended with baby wailing and SM cutting off friend mid-sentence with promises to call later which, of course, never materialise.

Then later in the playroom I almost had a fight with a four year old. The playroom in our building is overrun by badly-behaved children (yes, I know, this is a typical SM statement) who are unfazed by the presence of adults (not their parents) watching their selfishness in horror. So, there’s this area in the playroom with toys for babies but the older kids keep taking the toys out of the area and holing them up somewhere where the babies cannot find them. On Sunday, when we entered, this group of older kids had a huge pile of toys in a tub and Benji saw it and waddled over. This little girl screeched at him and then looked at me defiantly. I gave her a tremendous glare and was ready to do battle but then decided to take Benji away as there were only two toys in her pile; the other kids had grabbed and run away with the others. But generally, I was on the verge of taking her to task. V went “Were you just going to fight with a four-year-old?” and I was like “Yes!”

On the subject of the playroom, it is interesting and sometimes heartbreaking to watch the dynamics between the kids. I see kids being mean to other kids and there’s nothing one can do. One wonders whether one would prefer one’s kid to be the bully or the bullied.

At around six months, Benji started making a beeline for other kids’ toys. Basically, he wanted to check out what they were doing. I noticed this with a lot of the baby boys his age…not so much the girls. My policy is that I don’t let Benji grab another kid’s toy but if the parents are open to it, I’d like to see if the two play together (which sometimes, though rarely, happens). If another kid comes for Benji’s toy, I don’t rush to his defense. I wait to see what happens. Benji is generally ok (in fact more interested) if some other kid is showing interest in his toy but if that kid tries to grab his toy, he doesn’t take it lying down and has been known to grab his toy back… which I’m pretty relieved about.

V and I were watching some older kids being mean to a little girl and I said “would you rather your kid be the bullier or the bullied” and he gestured to Benji who was yelling and protesting because I had just put something out of his reach and was like “Do you really think he’s going to be the bullied?”

Christmas list

In my old age, birthday gifts went out of the window and Christmas gifts even more so. However, one can want and indulge oneself, can’t one? So here’s what I want/need for Christmas:

1. Body lotion: Instead of just picking one already, I am researching this as if it’s my PhD thesis. V keeps saying – how about this one? And I will maddeningly shake my head and say – Hmmm, I don’t know. Yes, it has come to a stage where my husband is taking an interest in my choice of moisturiser. The thing is, I’m torn between going the cheapad route and getting one of the drugstore ones in a decent flavour (do lotions have a flavour?) such as Vaseline, Jergens and the like (which I know are perfectly decent) or the ultra-luxe route, blowing a tonne of money on a smallish bottle (but hey, I deserve it, right? right?). This is, of course, part of my personality which I blame on being a Libran. The middle route does not seem to exist. Or does it? Show me the middle route someone! Complicate my life further with your body lotion suggestions. Yes, I’m asking. Keep in mind that I don’t have super-dry skin but it is winter so can’t be ultra-light either.

2. Diary/Planner: I need one for the New Year and can’t seem to just pick one. I’ve seen some decent options but somehow none of them are calling to me or seem to satisfy my desire for book coverings that are quirky but not cute. (Out of desperation?) I’m leaning towards Moleskin, which I have always considered overpriced and boring. But there’s a Hong Kong which has all the street names listed so one could just point to it when in a taxi. Though, do I really want to add one more thing to my already overloaded bag? Then, I’m distracted by this Moleskin baby planner that lets you write down the baby’s health stuff etc. I like the concept but wondering if: a) I will use it b) It is possible to find one in a less boring avatar. But back to planner. Why do I even need one? Why not just use Outlook or Google’s Planner and be done with it? Well, because I like writing things down ok. I like buying notebooks and at least this one will be somewhat used. Now if only I could go ahead and pick one. Instead, what’s going to happen is that I will land up in a stationary shop with V and he will say – just get this. And I will acquiese and land up with something satisfactory but a little disappointing.

Ok, I wrote quite a lot about absolutely nothing but hey, I have a stuffy nose and I cannot sleep and waking up at 2 am has become a tradition of late.

Update: I bought the moisturiser. Crabtree and Evelyn Jojoba Oil. There was a 50% discount plus V was like “just buy it”. Ended up having a fight with him though, over whether one should buy a lavender moisturiser or not. What I really wanted to buy, though, was this from L’Occitane. Maybe I will. Probably not though – I am feeling frugal. I have decided L’Occitane is my bodycare brand to covet, like Furla used to be my bag brand.

Winter blues

I have decided. I hate winter.

Questions such as “Are you morning, afternoon or evening person?” or “Are you a summer or winter person?” have always stumped me. I have been unable to decide. Until now. Now I have conclusively decided on the latter at least. I am NOT a winter person. Does this make me a summer person?–The jury’s still out.

I realize now that the reason I had no clarity on this before can be blamed on growing up in Bombay. This great metropolis doesn’t really have a winter. Sure, we donned sweaters and sat around under blankets, shivering pleasurably and commenting on how cold it had got. But the temperature was in the mid-to-late 20s. Can this be counted as winter? I think not.

Thus, proper winter in Hong Kong, where the temperature hovers between 8 and 14 degrees, was something of an awakening. Okay, you’re probably smirking if you grew up in Wisconsin or Sweden or the like. Though I’ve noticed that people who grew up in these wintery climes seemed to have acquired heaters in Hong Kong while the likes of us from Bombayish weather profiles tried not to be wusses and spent at least a couple of winters braving the cold sans technology till we wizened up. Similarly, the lack of experience of winter can make it a novel experience initially, thereby dulling the full realization of one’s antipathy towards it.

And what may be the reasons for this antipathy?

The biggest, I would say, is bunching of clothing. By this I refer to the phenomenon whereby, necessitated by the cold, one has to wear a thickish long-sleeved sweater with a coat on top. Inevitably, the sleeves of the sweater will get bunched up in the arms of the coat, a VERY uncomfortable way of being. One may try inserting one’s genetically-gifted long fingers into the sleeve and prodding the bunched up inner clothing downward but this is never successful, especially if attempted with the left hand on the right sleeve. Thus, sometimes one ends up with one bunched up sleeve and one acceptable one and the asymmetry can drive you mad.

Try performing these upper-body contortions when pregnant and you’ll know why I’m particularly annoyed this winter.

Worse, this can also happen with long-sleeved pajama tops and fleece cardigans so you spend your entire evening twitching on the couch until you finally give up, fling off offending cardigan and crawl under a blanket in a huff, not quite warm and cozy and dreading the moment you have to get up to pee. Again, being pregnant, prospect of finding onself, uncardiganed and freezing, in toilet in middle of night, is multiplied manifold.

In addition to bunched up sleeves, one is also compelled to wear these appendages, and sometimes gloves, shuffling down the street like a clotheshorse gone mad, unable to grasp anything properly and generally disoriented. Then, try adding a baby bump into the mix.

The only good thing about winter is boots and being pregnant means that I cannot wear them because: a) I cannot bend down to zip them up b) I have sneaking suspicion calves are too fat to fit into them, a depression I am not willing to risk by trying them on. Thus, I am destined to wear ballet flat and black socks (because white socks and black shoes would be too Michael Jackson), making me appear like a little old lady.

And, of course, this being Hong Kong winter just swoops down on one literally overnight, killing one’s sinuses or inflaming one’s tonsils. It’s not just the cold but the fact that humidity drops from the crazy but constant 95% to suddenly 45%, an abrupt dryness only Superman could withstand. Even if one managed to avoid cold/cough/sore throat/flu for that one night, the next day in the MTR with everyone coughing and blowing their noses will do the trick.

God I’m grumpy. Gah!

Labour is hard

Since I’m pregnant and on baby forums a lot, I hear a lot of stuff along the lines of this article. That birth can be a natural, empowered process. That there is too much fear out there. That there is too much medicalisation of what is essentially a “natural” process.

Coming from India where birth is actually as ‘natural’ as it gets for most women, I have a less rosy view. The majority of women in India have no choice but to go natural and give birth in a non-medical set-up. The result is our appalling infant and maternal mortality rate.

I know I’m courting controversy here. I just wish the propounders of this natural philosophy would qualify what they mean by ‘natural’ and how ‘natural’ they are recommending. There is an assumption that they are only speaking to people in the developed world where natural would be assisted in your own home in hopefully sterile conditions with midwife and hopefully attendant medical equipment standing by and the option of calling an ambulance if anything goes wrong. Wish they would say so.

For every bit of research that comes up about current medical practice is not ideal, I wish they would have an explanation from those in favour of that practice on why they are continuing with it. Instead, all we hear are polarized views. For example, someone recently posted research on why doctors should wait before cutting the chord. What I’d like is for this very useful piece of information to be weighed up against research which tells us the benefits of not waiting to cut the chord. And then let us decide.

Similarly, there’s research on how inducing labour by drugs generally leads to use of more drugs (epidurals) and sometimes c-sections. But the articles I read concerning this research don’t square off against other research which justifies the current practice of inducing if contractions aren’t regular 12 hours after water has broken to prevent infection.

At the time of labour, one must be able to trust one’s doctor – who one assumes has read both sets of research – to make the right decision. That is what the doctor is for. That is why the doctor comes in to take a decision if there are deviations from the standard delivery. Yes, we need to empower ourselves with information and ask questions. And the doctors should answer them, which doesn’t happen enough. But sometimes there is no black and white answer and someone has to take a call. If you want it to be you to take a call going against the doctor’s advice, then do you waive the right to blame the doctor if something goes wrong?

I also have a problem with this nothing-to-fear and empowerment rhetoric. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to have a pain-free labour. One may be able to control this pain through breathing, meditation or medication. Regardless, there will be pain. To fear pain is a human instinct. Isn’t that the most ‘natural’ reaction? Why fight it? Why this fear of fear?I’d rather acknowledge that I’m afraid than pretend I’m not. To fear something doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t face it. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” Why not teach women to be courageous instead of telling them not to be afraid?

I hear so much about how images in the media make women afraid of labour. Actually, I feel the images in the media provide a very hunky-dory view of what labour is. It is far more gruesome and generally a longer process than the images in the media. I hear very few detailed accounts of labour and that’s why I appreciate when birth stories are shared.

[Read GB’s birth story here, R’s Mom’s here and mine here]

I don’t find these stories to be scaremongering. I found them useful to have a realistic picture of what lies ahead. I was lucky that my sister gave me as honest a description of the process of labour and the kind of pain to expect before I went in. I’m also glad that through my sister I got more than an inkling of how hard the first three months of being a mom are.

Frankly, I’d rather know the worst case scenario and prepare for it mentally. That’s me. There are people for whom putting a positive spin on things works. I’m not one of them. I’d rather call a spade a spade.

I didn’t find labour particularly empowering or beautiful. Of course, for some women it might be. But I don’t see why it should be. All this talk about empowerment sounds like a PR exercise.

For me the aim was and will be to get my baby out into the world safely. This was not one of those ‘the journey is more important than the destination’ trips. I didn’t want to linger to smell the roses or savour the process. It was brutal and if there was an easier way I’d love to take it. People eulogizing about labour sounds to me like women who say their period is a privilege because it allows them to have babies. Right, but if you could have a baby without sitting on a pile of blood and cramping every month wouldn’t you rather? Is there anything empowering about a period?

Yes, it is empowering to know what you can withstand. But I would hope one choose ‘natural’ labour because it is generally the healthy choice for mother and child and not to test the limits of one’s pain tolerance or to be empowered. Having a baby is like running a marathon but it’s not the same.

My problem with all this talk of empowerment and beauty in childbirth is that it will work for only those women who need to talk up an experience, who need to see the positive in it. And for some women, expecting labour to be a rosy experience is going to end in nothing but tears and disappointment and a sense that they weren’t good enough because they didn’t enjoy it. Many of us are okay with it being the pain in the ass and thereabouts that it is, given that we have no choice in the matter, and would rather not call it anything else. This does not in any way prevent us from choosing to go through it or being awestruck by the beauty and miracle that our babies are when they do arrive.

Many mes

The Compulsive Confessor had this post where she makes a reference to the older hers. It’s so well written that I’m going to have to quote her on this:

What happens to old personalities? Do we fold them up and put them away among mothballs? Where are the mes that used to be? Maybe, like an onion, if I kept peeling layer after layer of myself off, I’d find the original me, the me I began with. On the other hand, the me that lurks closer to the surface is who I am now, for better or for worse, my personality has formed, and it’s hard to break yourself of it.

I also feel that around the time I hit 30 my personality had formed. I’m more confident in my own skin, not as adaptable as I used to be, more hard-edged. It’s the physical things like not drinking as much, going to bed earlier, not being comfortable in any bed but my own. But also the more intangible ones – not hanging about on the edge of a party, speaking up and yet talking less overall, not just going along with everyone else’s plan, making decisions and sticking to them, digging my heels in, being even less bothered what people think.

I think back to the older mes. As a young child I was reticent, almost friendless in school, and yet, talkative and cheerful around a chosen few. By the time, I hit secondary school, I managed to find my niche, never popular but not a complete nobody either, on the fringes of the popular, one of the smart but not completely geeky (I hope) ones.

In college I gained confidence , I discovered what I was passionate about and what I was good at (literature and writing) but I was still sort of on the edge of the party, a little socially awkward. My first boyfriend changed all that. I blossomed in the knowledge that someone could be so head over heels in love with me. It gave me a place from which to be myself. There were boys competing over me, granted boys from a very limited circle but I learnt what it was like to be the object of desire and it’s a sweet lesson to learn.

In my early 20s, I came into my own. I discovered my career and I discovered I was attractive to people beyond the small circle of my school friends and my building. I had always been guarded and cynical socially; suddenly, I just decided to let go. I’d take the lead in making conversation – I hated social niceties so I dispensed with them most often. If someone asked me ‘how are you?’, I told them how I was really. It had a surprising effect but it worked because they stopped saying superficial things to me as well. I’ve never been a great dancer but I didn’t care anymore. I flirted and I was flirted with everywhere I went. I would probably never be the centre of the party but I was no longer cringing in the corners any more. I was reveling in who I was and other people liked it too.

Well, most people. One of my close friends told me that she thought I had changed for the worse. That I seemed frantic and over-dramatic. Other people have told me I’m a drama queen . I think I’m more a person who likes to live in a story than an absolute drama queen. I’m too low maintenance to be a diva. But I do like a good turn of phrase. And I was very restless then and maybe people who were used to me being the sedate one weren’t prepared for this new more out-there me.

Things calmed down when I met V. I was living a fairytale and I played the role of princess. I allowed myself to be the dependent one, to be led by the hand. Ever since my first boyfriend, I’ve been pampered by the men in my life and by now, I saw it as my due. This might have been obnoxious but I can honestly say I gave as much as I got. Probably more. I toned down my public personality, I was no longer on the prowl. I met a lot of completely new people in a completely new cities and I realised I had lost the mojo of sociability somewhat. Nevertheless, I purred a lot.

What happens after happy-ever-after though? Things changed and I changed. First, I blazed like a meteor in a fury of drama – this time I was truly dramatic, more crazy and wild and violent than I knew I could be, a side of me only V saw because he was the object of it all. Then one day, I burned out.

Through it all, there have been things that have never changed. Since my earliest days to today, I’m cynical but a dreamer with an idealistic streak. I love a good argument, to play devils advocate, to see both sides of the coin almost endlessly. Yet, I like to get to the heart of the matter. I dislike the superficial and so I will never be the most social of people.

The past few years have seen me somewhat come full circle. I have folded more into myself. I’m more guarded about my feelings, about laying it all out there for people. I think before I speak. I am less confident of my reading of people and situations. Professionally, I strategise. Socially, I have less and less to say by way of polite conversation, sometimes I am literally tongue-tied, a blank. Being a mother has given me less time for other people and more focused on priorities.

In many of these things, but not all, I have been influenced by V who I realise is so like the old me. Only, he’s a guy and that is quite possibly a natural state for a guy to be. And he can rise to the occasion when the superficial is called for. I’m not sure about me – I still have a very feminine urge to lay it all out there – but with time and discipline, restraint has become almost natural and anyway, it’s a falling back into an old self.

So, what have your past personalities been? Where have they gone? Or have you always been the same?

PS: Read about MinCat’s metamorphosis here.