The Perfect Ending

A bright sunbeam decided today that I shouldn’t be let to sleep in. My mind struggles to clear the fog of my dreamless sleep. Dreamless... that’s what all nights have been since… well, I can’t remember. I look around. Not that there’s much to observe around here. I might as well have been in paradise, it’s all so white. White walls, white bedspreads, white curtains, white everything… even this excuse of an outfit I’m wearing is white, now why on earth would I buy something like this? Besides the white, there’s the smell… its unbearable, like everything ahs been washed 10 times n then some weird sorta cleanser used 20 more times. Does everything have to be so clean around here? There’s some stuff in the room too (maybe just to distract a person from being blinded by all the white). Some medical mumbo-jumbo, a small table with a jug of water on it and a diary...

A diary? What’s that doing here? I know I shouldn’t be reading it, but I can’t resist. Only a few pages have been written in. Before I can do any reading, a woman walks in (dressed in white, you guessed right!) She has a tray with her, with some food on it, and medicines. Something’s oddly familiar about her. Maybe she feels it too; by the way she’s smiling at me. She gives me some tablets, the food is my breakfast. I suddenly realize I’m starving. As I eat she asks me about how I feel today, well - as bright as..uhmm.. She smiles a bit sadly at my sudden loss of words. She asks me to read the diary, says its mine, says I might find some answers there. She leaves me to finish my breakfast and leaves, saying she’ll come by tomorrow as usual. As usual? Was she ever here before?

I begin to read. Well, like I said I haven’t written much. Well to sum up what’s written in there, I have what could be called total amnesia. How I got here, I don’t remember (well, duh!!). But the sad part is not just that. I came here in a very bad state, and even though the fixed me up pretty well (I got out of a coma after a month, just before they were about to take me off life support, having given up all hope), and while I can function as well as the next human being, I have no memory of what I do, even temporarily. And it’s getting worse by the day. I am forgetting even the smallest things. There are sudden moments where I remember stuff, but not more than that. But that’s not what scares me. I’ve written that I’m supposed to read this every day. Every day? I don’t remember how many days I have been reading this. I don’t remember when I got out of a coma, was it yesterday? Was it a year ago? Does it matter? Tomorrow I will wake up again with no memory of today, read this same crap again and ask myself the same questions.

Suddenly, this white room seems a lot smaller. Who ever said light colors create an illusion of space? Now everything I do, every thought I think, I wonder how many times before I have thought it. I haven’t written about whether my condition is curable, which leads me to believe it may not be. I’ve just been asked to write it down, so I don’t go insane wondering about stuff. From what I’ve written, I gather that no one has ever been to visit me here. The guy who found me was the doctor himself. I’ve not yet been told of the cause of my condition, to spare me mental trauma apparently. Mental trauma? Seriously? I can’t even remember my name. I don’t know how old I am. I don’t even know what I look like, no mirrors here.

All I know right now is that I’m choking. I’m choking and there are invisible metal fingers that are clasping my windpipe and I can’t breathe no more. I stumble towards the bed and sit down heavily on it. I need something… but I don’t know what. I look around helplessly, hopelessly at the white around me trying to figure it out. My eyes land on my uneaten breakfast plate, there’s a spoon and a fork. Before I know what I’m doing, I grasp the fork.

After it’s all over and done with, I realize it’s not the fork that killed me. It’s not the metal fingers around my windpipe. It’s not even the blood flowing along my wrist, staining the white bed sheets red and disturbing the flow of white in the room. It’s the uncertainty. It’s the “not-knowing”.

I wanted a perfect ending.

Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme,

and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Life is about not knowing, having to change,

taking the moment and making the best of it,

without knowing what's going to happen next.

Delicious ambiguity.

The Path I Choose

There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at crossroads.

True enough. So many times in life I can’t help but feel resentful for the abundance of choices. Oh how wouldn’t I love someone else making all the tough choices for me. To not have to bear the consequences. To not have to answer the “what if’s?” But as a friend of mine says, if wishes were horses, stable boy would be a prince.

The choices we make in those moments can define the rest of our days.

Great. That reduces some of the pressure. Every thing you, say, everything you do, decides what happens to the rest of your life. And yet, there is no way of actually knowing what will happen. No way of knowing how right your choice is, no matter how right it may seem.

And, of course when faced with the unknown, most of us prefer to turn around and go back.

You know, how sometimes you come across some people, and it’s all great for a while, but it slowly melts away to nothing? I don’t know about you, but I sure wonder if I’d have been better of without ever having met them. Because if it can’t be like what it used to be, I fear for what the future would hold.

But, once in a while, people push onto something better. Something found just beyond the pain of going it alone. And just beyond the bravery and courage it takes to let someone in.

Again, don’t know about you, but it does take a lot of bravery and courage on my part to let someone into my life. Ask my friends. They’ll tell you. On a more serious note, it is only the hope for something better that keeps us all going… and sometimes, when we get really lucky, when we are least expecting it, we find something that almost makes everything we faced until then seem… bearable (worth it would sound more fitting, but its not what I’d feel). Almost.

Or to give someone a second chance. Something beyond the quiet persistence of a dream.

Maybe it doesn’t have to always been the path less trodden, you know? Maybe the other path seems simpler because a lot have people have used it to make it easier for you. I’d leave thank you notes for them, but I doubt they’d want to return. I don’t believe too much in second chances. I don’t believe in people changing. Those who do are not meant for me. But I figure, maybe I need a second chance at times. Maybe… just maybe, I might have gotten my first chance wrong… MAYBE.

Because, it's only when you’re tested that you truly discover who you are. And, it's only when you're tested that you discover who you can be.

And who I am, is exactly who I want to be. Where I am, is exactly where I wanted to be. Maybe with slight changes. Maybe not always at the right time. But I’ll get there. I know that. Especially now. Especially whn I know it need not be alonely journey. Not if I don’t want it to…