exercising my literacy

Feeling a lil marooned...

Although I've spent more nights away than at home these last two weeks, so far I've only spent one night living away from home in the true sense of the word. Meaning that I'm living on my own, cooking my own meals, needing to take care of everything myself. And one night has been enough for me to figure out that I don't really like it. Don't call me a baby just yet, but living on my own is really hard. It's not the taking care of myself that gets to me, it's the fact that I'm all by myself.

Until that night, I never realised how much incidental conversation I have with my family when I get home. Or how much conversation I have with friends on the phone or the net (there's no phone line and no net access). I was so unused to not uttering a single word from the time I went home at 2pm til when I finally couldn't stand it anymore and called a friend on my mobile at 9. I can't remember the last time I didn't speak at all for 7 hours straight. Oh man how good it felt to finally talk to someone.

If I didn't have an after-hours roster, I'd actually drive 2 hours each way every day just to avoid the isolation. And I'm going to keep at it cos, well, it's only for a few weeks. I know it'll be over soon.

But, it made me think about people who have to live like this all the time.

Like the registrar that's on my team -- she has to live down here for the year. What's worse is that her husband and her child is up in Sydney, so she only gets to see her baby on the weekends. But at least for her it's only for the year; and she still speaks to her husband every night on the pay phone downstairs out in the corridor.

But what about people who perpetually live alone? Who aren't just geographically alone, but who have no one to call even when they can't stand the loneliness anymore? People in nursing homes. Homeless people. Or people who just have no friends.

I just spent a weekend up at Katoomba learning about relationships. The existence of such an event, and the presence of 3000 attendees implied that all these people all had a constellation of different relationships in which they wanted to get God's guidance on. So often we just assume that people have a rich social network that we forget that some people don't have such a luxury, and that we take our family and friends for granted so so much.

We are so so blessed to have the people around us. But I don't want you to finish reading this just feeling all warm and fuzzy or whatever. Don't just spare a thought for people like that. Think of someone you know who might be in a situation like this and call them. Write them an email or even a letter, the old-fashioned way with an envelope and stamp. I know it's weird to talk to people that you're not close with -- I find it hard to just go up to new people and talk to them, especially since I hate awkward superficial conversation. But you never know how much of an impact your effort will have on them. How much it might just make their day, just like the way Jan made my day when we caught up on the phone on Thursday night.

Oh, and one last thing. Thankyou for being my friend. To know I have you there to hear me out when I need, is something that I'm truly thankful of, and I appreciate more than words can say. Hahaha and if you get a call from me these next few weeks, you'll know why...

posted by me. @ 9:04 PM