SOLITUDE IS A WOMAN NAMED BARBARA

Barbra Streisand via last.fm

When I was younger, solitude was a dear and trusted friend. Today, she’s an uninvited guest who kills me softly with nagging thoughts…

We all know what to do with such a guest. Avoid them. Or if they finally caught up with us, get them to leave us be as fast as possible. Sometimes, however, it’s best to just embrace this old friend and even spend an entire evening catching up.

I just did so one evening last week, and was the wiser for it… I guess.

(Instead of turning up the volume on my Samba collection, I explicitly switched to Streisand, as corny as it may sound.)

I did not know it at the time but I realized that Barbara’s songs are quite therapeutic especially if you need a head start verbalizing your emotions.

It was then that a flood of memories came rushing in. Good and bad ones, mostly painful ones and a few smile-inducing ones, stupid mistakes really that now seem funny. I wish I could say it did felt like traveling forward in time and meeting your older self admonishing you to avoid things you would regret later.. but looking back, it did felt like that except that you see things from a woman’s point of view, which is kinda refreshing actually.

One true thing I’ve learned though: I might not ever survive another evening alone with Streisand.