The things you shouldn’t know

You know that saying, “it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt”? Well, it’s true for every age, and all contexts.

Happiness comes in waves. But like love and pain, it comes unexpectedly and leaves the same way.

The key to being happy – and most of all serene – is acknowledging that you yourself and you alone are responsible for that precious feeling. You’re the only one who can control your feelings even if most times it doesn’t seem so easy or plausible to do.

It’s a magical and refreshing sensation to allow yourself to get carried away in the moments. Those instances that take your breath away, that have you tearing with laughter so much that your abs hurt. Those glimpses of time you look back on and smile nostalgically.

But there is always that inexplicable – demonic – hunch that nothing is so perfect; and it won’t last.

So what do you do when you see something you shouldn’t have? What if you notice a message you shouldn’t be aware of? Or overhear a conversation you weren’t meant to? How do you “un-know” things you shouldn’t know? How do you press “undo” on life events?

It’s mindblowing how emotions can change in a millisecond. How your entire perspective can alter by knowing something you shouldn’t. How everything moves from one extreme to another simply because of a differentiation of facts. It’s as quickly as clouds of rain form in a clear blue sky and hail begins to pour.

But that you can’t really control.

Can you?

Or is it there to show you something? Because often things happen to remind you what you deserve and to rethink where you are and what you’re devoting your energy and time on. Is it worth it if you’re not feeling happy, appreciated and valued?

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Words left unsaid

He had walked out a month ago, but still had his keys. The keys to the home they built together, the one that would house their common dreams.

They hadn’t spoken since.

She didn’t know what he was doing, where he was, what he worked on, how he was feeling. She only had her viewpoint. And that was biased.

It was pitch black outside when she got up. Even the lights had all been turned off. It was the usual hour she felt forced out of bed, too tormented by nightmares to remain lying there trying to sleep.

She took a pen and paper, rarely nowadays abandoning her keyboard, and this meant it was too important to type. It had to be handwritten to reflect the emotion it contained.

“At night, when I can’t sleep, I write to you. Letters, I’ll never send and you’ll probably never read. But it helps me calm down during the nights I’m tortured by the thoughts in my head. When the chaos inside me overwhelms and devours me. I write to tell you what you can’t seem to hear from me. I write in an effort to make you understand. To make you see that even a dragon hides a frightened mouse inside. That sometimes all you need is the reassurance and certainty of having someone next to you at all times, no matter what and above everything and everyone else. I thought that was you. Not to heal me. You wouldn’t do that. But to help me heal myself. Love won’t heal wounds. The feeling of safety and being loved no matter what, who and when, is what makes a person stronger. What helps them heal themselves.

You were supposed to stick around for the hard times too, not just the good ones.

We were supposed to grow stronger together, to grow with each other, helping one another to develop into the best person they can be. We were supposed to form a unit as one – a force to reckon with, a single corps against the world. We were supposed to be ‘us’. A power couple. We were supposed to be allies to one another. Not to demolish each other, ripping ourselves apart from the inside. We were supposed to close each other’s scars, not create new ones.

Yet despite everything – all the words said, all the actions done (or not) – I still wait for you. In the sounds of daily life, in the phone calls that ring, the doors that knock, I longingly hope it will be you. I see you in every single thing that reminds me of you. I still hope you’ll come into my darkness and turn on the light. The light that faded and is now lost. My light that I allowed to be extinguished.

Yet you never do.

That itself should be a sign. Just like all those things we didn’t do: the trips we never went on, the plans we never followed through. All signs. An answer to all the ‘whys’ that won’t let my mind rest.

Yet I still wait. Hoping even now for something to change. Because hope is all we have left.”

In the morning, she booked a plane ticket and left. That same afternoon, he used his keys again.

The ‘if’s and reality

Why is it that whenever you are in a hurry or late for a meeting the bus always takes forever to show up, when every other time there is one passing by ever five minutes?

Or when you’re all nicely dressed up and in high heels a car drives by and splashes the puddle of rainwater on your new outfit?

Or when you think you have finally emptied your to-do list, another million things appear for you to add on it.

There is an adage called Murphy’s Law you probably know it: Anything that can go wrong — will go wrong.

It usually does. Sometimes due to chance, sometimes due to circumstances, most times due to stupidity and lack of comprehending the obvious.

The need to plan ahead and have time to get to your meeting, the logic of not standing by the puddle in the first place, the courage to say ‘no’ and pace yourself.

Then again there are somethings that are simply out of your hand. When drowning in tasks you are forced to do and ask for help, you are not responsible if that boomerangs back as a negative answer. For if it is physically impossible for you to work during non-working hours then that is all there is to it. The cost of medical remedy far outweighs any financial remuneration you may receive from daily encounters with persons and situations that only weigh the benefits and not both sides.

If people had the good judgement to understand the rationale behind each situation, we would have better communication between us, we would live more harmoniously with each other and misunderstandings would not occur. But they don’t, and we don’t and they do.

It is a pity really. Because we then truly start to believe that Murphy’s Law is an unbreakable rule.

There is just one thing that it makes you truly wonder though: what really did happen to Murphy?