There’s a sweet melancholy in autumn.
Soothing like the dreamless sleep you drift off on, wrapped in a blanket on the couch.
Fulfilling as the vellichor and perfume of old bookshops.
Rejuvenating like the new plans you wish to forge.
Encouraging for the beautiful things that are arriving.
Also part of Weekend Writing Prompt #233
Distance has the power to show you the value of a person.
So does silence.
When you stop looking for them, who comes searching for you?
Friendship – and any type of relationship – is a two-way affair. You can’t be the one constantly chasing people. Heck, you shouldn’t be chasing anyone to begin with. We attract those we deserve, and the energy we emit is what returns to us. So relax. Whatever should, will come to you in time.
Don’t forget that the best stocktaking on life is made on the move – in trains, airplanes, and automobiles. It’s when you’re leaving that you realise what you miss most, who is looking for you, and to whom you want to return. The truest reflections come to you when you’re trying to escape life. It’s when you acknowledge what you’re longing to go back to.
“Tell noone”.
It was how the note ended. The most important instruction given. Her most compromising mission yet.
Ever since she began working as an undercover agent, Maggie was forced to surpass her limits many times. She found she had to repress natural instincts on many occasions; to act differently than she normally would; to think more about the impact of her actions.
But now, she was called to act in absolute secrecy and utmost confidentiality.
She would have to hide the truth from the people she loved to keep them safe. But that would mean lying to them. And she couldn’t stomach that.
She came to terms with the fact that she could simply say nothing at all, mainly by avoiding them for as long as the mission lasted. She invented numerous excuses to get out of seeing people so she wouldn’t have to respond to their inquiries.
It was difficult doing things without showcasing them. Because this is the world we live in now – if we don’t demonstrate our lives, it’s as if we don’t have one.
But she had to withdraw from it all, precisely to be able to safeguard life.
“Legend says that when you can’t sleep at night it’s because you’re awake in someone else’s dream”.
“That’s cheesy”, she grinned.
“It made you blush,” he smiled coyly.
“I once read that if you want to look at someone’s soul, you have to look at their dreams”.
It all got serious suddenly.
“The dreams we don’t share to many because we’re too preoccupied with making them a reality”.
She stared into his blue-grey eyes.
He was honest like no-other. And he had a plan.
One seemingly as simple, yet fulfilling, as having table salt and pepper in their common home.
Also part of Friday Fictioneers
He was haunted by his dreams at night. Or anytime he fell asleep really. He couldn’t find comfort in allowing himself to drift off. It scared him. Because of the visions that would appear. They weren’t just disturbing nightmares like he thought at first. They were truths, prophecies waiting to be fulfilled. And he was often helpless at preventing them because they occurred somewhere he knew nothing of, to people he could not even recognise. But the news always proved his dreams were more than that. And he was powerless against them.
When he met her, he was terrified.
He fell in love with her from the minute she laid eyes on him, and she smiled so brightly, probably because she realised that.
He kept falling deeper in love with her in every passing day. He wanting to give her the world, simply because she never asked for it. She was there, like a silent support pillar, despite knowing nothing of his torment.
But somehow, in her arms he could fall asleep; drift into a dreamless REM, and wake up without anguish, fear, abhor at what may occur during the day. She was his remedy, without knowing it; she was essential to him.
The day she was departing for a trip, he knew something was wrong. He could feel it pulsing in every minute pore of his body. There was something not right. He didn’t want to let her go. But she hugged him tightly, kissed him gently, and reassured him that everything was going to be fine. She had that positive vibe constantly glowing in her aura, and it made her sweeter, even more charming, and so difficult to resist. He wanted to believe her, even though his instinct reacted otherwise.
When she closed the door to the cab at the airport, he could feel his entire world shatter to pieces.
There is a tingling sensation mixed with an adrenaline rush when you take a trip abroad with a partner. Particularly when the flirting is still young and everything is so sweet and fresh and delightful. There are so many things you want to do; so much you want to talk about; as if trying to make up for the time lost when you hadn’t yet met each other.
It was freezing cold at the square. You could feel it climbing inside and diffusing into every vein. But when he heard her laugh ripple, he needed nothing more to warm up.
Also part of Friday Fictioneers
“You know that nothing can kill you more than your own thoughts, right?” He looked at her sharply. Once again she was drowning herself, choking up on makeshift scenarios. He needed to be harsh to snap her out of it.
“We make up disasters in our heads, because we build too much expectation and then become devastated when it’s not fulfilled. Just let things be”.
“My grandma once said: The key to happiness is letting each situation be what it is, instead of what you think it should be”.
“So live the moments; it’s what composes life and it’s what you will remember”.
They say happiness doubles when shared. But what about sadness? Does that halve in magnitude? Because we tend to keep our misery bottled up, especially when we consider that everyone has problems of their own, many of which are more serious than ours.
But what if we choose to live those fleeting moments – those phantom pleasures that last only a bit – and we keep them to ourselves and only share them with a few close confidants?
What if when we return to reality, they seem like a dream? What if all we have to account for them are the photos we took but never uploaded anywhere? What if the only documented evidence of our fun was how it made us feel? How long will it last? And how will we make it endure for longer?
Why is it that whenever something good arrives, we have an innate fear that it will overturn, and that something bad will come to upset it all? Why do we allow ourselves to fall into that spiralling circle that messes up our minds? What if we just send out the optimism and positiveness we hope to receive; would that make fortune return to us?
Life is what it is. But that’s not always easy to accept. No matter what anyone tells us to do.
“When people are upset, the cultural convention is to bring them a hot beverage”. So says Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.There is an intrinsic truth in that a warm drink offers comfort. It soothes your insides like a warm hug and subconsciously makes you feel a little better. As if giving you space and the capacity to breathe somewhat deeper.
The convention, however, lies in the fact that by offering a beverage, you demonstrate you care. And in essence, that’s what we’re all looking for. Someone to be there when we’re not ourselves. We need the assurance that someone is looking out for us when we’ve given up on that. That there are people who care, because we matter.
A hot beverage is more than just a comfort drink. It is like a hug in a mug. And we all know how important hugs are.
Family therapist Virginia Satir once said: “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth”. But even then, they may not be enough. Hugging is an intimate expression of safety. You feel the other person’s heartbeat on your chest and instantly feel comforted and reassured that whatever it is you’re facing it will pass. What we’re really doing – if you come to think about it – is fighting away loneliness. Because that’s what scares us the most. Of grieving alone, of being overwhelmed by sadness alone, of not having anyone to alleviate the suffering you most probably create by overthinking.
So, offer hugs abundantly. And a hot beverage too.
How do you switch it off? Your mind. How do you hinder the perplexities? How do you stop it from making scenarios, rushing to conclusions, dreaming ahead? How do you escape your own thoughts?
How is it that your entire mood can change by a single potential drawn up in your head? By that question or theory that wakes you up at night and haunts your sleep? How is it that what we fear most or anguish about is usually simply something concocted by our brain and not reality?
We fabricate our dreams, yet we cannot stop ourselves from cursing our own good fortune. And for that, we bring ourselves harm because we expect things to go wrong. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we overthink everything and then anticipate it all to take the wrong turn.
But what if we silenced that part of our brain that cautions us so much it does not allow us to live; to enjoy even the simplest things of life?
What if we took the risk of tumbling upside down inside a sheet hanging off the ceiling, like we do in aerial yoga? What if we enabled ourselves to do something different – something out of the box and beyond our comfort zone? What if we enjoyed it so much that we could finally begin to acknowledge that life eventually gains the vivacity you send out to it?
It all begins inside that powerful organ – the brain. Don’t let it bring self-destruction for no apparent cause.
MC's Whispers 