The day I died.
I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time but…
A wise friend once told me, “anything that comes before a ‘but’ is irrelevant.”
If there’s the slightest truth to that, then it goes on to establish most of the things I said was irrelevant.
Never took the dreaded word seriously. What started as a casual affair with the word turned to an addiction. It took over my mind and system. I’d use the word at the end of every sentence like I would a period. Soon it began to reflect in my actions and before I knew it, the monster began to eat me from within. I feared. I wanted to put an end to it. But….
Look what it did; the word killed me.
I’m in hell right now. This place isn’t half as bad as my insides are; dark, murky and cold. I can sense an eerie silence around me until suddenly out of nowhere comes a blinding flashback of all the thoughts, worries and doubts with a force strong enough to kill me. Wait I am already dead! I thought dying meant freedom. Freedom from all of it! Then who in the hell just turned on that flashback of my life????
I’ve lost track of time. I’ve shut my eyes so tight that it hurts. I’m sweating it to mentally block the flashback but that was one of the essential skills I never mastered while on Earth. I’m praying.. praying desperately for all of it to disappear.
Someone somewhere is surely enjoying this drama. While a part of me wants to muster the strength to stand up and fight, the other half seems to have accepted defeat. I’m not convinced because there’s something extremely disturbing about this other half. His demeanor, his power; they scream victory. He is so keen on my going through the flashback that I begin to wonder whether it’s him behind all of this.
Oh. Crap.
Rewind.
Scene 1: Confusion
You and I were out for lunch and you made the mistake of asking me to choose from the menu. There I sat thinking and analyzing the options long until after you died of hunger. After all that you’d have expected I’d have an answer but NO. I can’t do MCQs without having to resort to ‘Inky pinky ponky’! Surprises me why I always complained about not being good at theory Qs. Given the level of analyzing I do, I’d have research books to my fame!
Scene 2: Indecisiveness
My life’s mantra was ‘Live Impulsive’; fast and furious! This whole ‘decision making’ was too tedious and time-consuming! So I made ONE decision; To let my people make decisions for me, after all they knew me better than I did myself!
Scene 3: Procrastination
If you had seen my obsession with putting things in order at the very moment they need to be according to ME (even if we returned home post midnight, I’d stay up to organize), you’d say I was bullshitting about ‘procrastination’ but only if you knew! For instance, I applied for the sodexo card at work after a year of getting taxed, literally and figuratively!
Scene 4: Imperfectly perfect.
I grew up to have a serious issue with perfection that caused me to be extremely paranoid about a nosehair in sight or food stuck in my teeth or an added inch of fat on my body or a crease on my clothes! This coming from the girl who didn’t bother about a moustache that she was teased about at school or those hairy legs on display under her dad’s shorts she wore to play!
Scene 5: Except expectations
I was a people’s person. I loved you, you loved me and we all lived happily ever after in La-La land until…Someone asked me to change and called me imperfect and I came crashing down on Earth! There I found myself being forced deep deep down by the burden of expectations but with all that flailing and kicking (*mom kicking my ass :P) I survived! Proof: CA after 6 attempts!
“STOP IT”, I scream at him..I have had enough of this. I don’t need this recap anymore than I need him to rub in the fact that I’m in hell. I open my eyes and look up to see him smiling at me. He’s perched himself upon one of those tall chairs, the kind a lifeguard uses. The irony isn’t lost on me.
“Why can’t you see me dead in peace?”, I plead with him in desperation. “Yeah, I messed up real bad and I regret it more than you think! You win okay? I want to LIVE now that I’m dead! Now get just get away from me pleeeaaasee!!” He looks at me with a surprising kindness. Maybe I had imagined those horns on his head! “So you sure you’re dead? You don’t think all of this could be happening in your head?” My jaws drop and I have stupidity written all over my face. “Wait, you’re kidding me right because you’re making no sense. I was supposed to die. I wanted to!.”
He smiles again and says no more. He doesn’t need to. I understand. I finally do.
What choice will I make?
….
C.A.: Confused Aquarian 