Back at it again

KLIA - LHR, STD - AAR, KLIA - CDK. 

The period after my previous post were spent taking up travels. Towards the last few weeks before my departure, I was sliding into a brain slump. Days were blurring into one another, I'd lost track of my motivations, I didn't feel inspired or engaged, and so basically I needed a different environment to kickstart my life. I suppose this can be done in a myriad of ways - finding new projects, socialising in new circles, investing in new workout classes (the key word is new, phew!), but as it happens, my drug of choice is travelling (note to future parents: don't get your kids hooked up on narcotics, give them a passport and you'll never see them again!).

The strangest thing about it this time around is that, instead of gallivanting off to the Himalayas in Nepal, or the colonial french towns in Vietnam, or a safari in Kenya.. I somehow ended up back in London. A year's worth of psychiatric analysis and self investigation could entrench a catalogue of reasons but the bottom line is that I missed the space and the comfort. 4 years ago I'd never even think of going to the same country twice, but I'm growing into the idea of doing things for my (mental and emotional) health rather than my (prideful and irrational) ego, so I bought a ticket in the middle of February and was in London by the last week of March.

I've mentioned this before, that 4 years living alone in a different country does incredible things for yourself. There's a whole other person I became while I was away, someone the 22 years old, the one who left KLIA so confidently and optimistically back in September 2014, would never imagine she'd be by the age of 26, in March 2018. The simplest way of saying this is that I found myself growing into my own space and my own person, away from people's input and expectations of me. I became so much more at ease operating on my own frequency, timeline, and thoughts, that staying back in Malaysia became a whirlpool of noise.

There were (are) so many superficial distractions - from the need to appear always in control, the chase for an impeccable career, the desire to appear flawlessly put together for social gatherings, the constant backend of relationship status queries, and so much more. I found myself missing an environment where I am surrounded by ideas and innovations, provocative conservations, a foreign culture, and above all, a silent state where I could just entertain my internal monologue. I've been accumulating so many questions in the months that I've been back in Malaysia, most that need answering if I were to grow.

The bad news is that after 2 weeks in London (I extended my departure back to KL twice! How incredibly, amazingly, humbly, gratefully, lucky is this person that I became, masyaAllah), I didn't exactly sit down and got around to answering those questions. But what the fortnight did was erase all the other gunk in the whiteboard of my mind, so now the slate is a little cleaner, less cluttered, and I can actually get around to begin focusing on the real questions. This is a big lesson, my own personal take, in self care: that it's better to step away from the noise before it drowns you. That it's completely okay to pause, take a breather, and decide that what people expect of you isn't necessarily the best thing for yourself. That by your mid 20s, you're big enough to decide what's best for you and to trust your gut. That it's also imperative to do all this responsibly.