Future sight
I remembered something yesterday. It was such a surprising, yet simple discovery. Now i know, why i live in such shadows of doubt. Perhaps, it all started from one simple day...
I'm walking around, scooting around, like i do at home. I had my parents, my brother and my trusty little feet to zoom around the living room, into the kitchen and then rushing into my room, just to come out again. It was the most blissful time of my life. In those short moments that i now wish would just last forever, i lived like Peter Pan - the hero of my life. That day i went to the mall, with my parents and younger brother, just two years shy of my toddler 5. I got lost in the crowd. Alone.
Just a few minutes ago, my parents were talking about how children got lost. Even the loudspeaker warned of losing your children below 5 in the shopping mall. It was the annual sale - you couldn't get more packed a time than that.
In those few minutes, it felt like hours, like days, like an entire year. In fact, i felt frozen in an ice cube made of fear. It didn't come in a sudden gush, but it came in a slow, scary, creep. I tried my best to keep my 5-year-old-cool. But it seemed useless. Five years were just not enough to keep me steady. It just wasn't enough for me to not feel afraid. I was living a nightmare.
In some moments of a person's life, they just sit to think. Not because they are happy, not because they are surprised, but because they are afraid. Fear has gotten hold of them. Fear: the tyrant that robs you of hope and leaves a dreadful trail of memories behind it. It turns everything into ash. It will destroy...all...your...dreams.
Those, i think ten minutes, were enough to scar me for life. At that time, i was lucky enough to have some saviors. The dreadful thought of my life ending there and then, was just...too much for my 5-year-old self. It was translated into some horrific version of me being kidnapped and then left for...nothing. That was even worse. I had nothing to go on with. My knowledge was so limited, that i did not know what would happen after that. My parents, being the average people they are, had filled me with dreadful tales of lost children. I hadn't the least idea of what stood ahead of me. I couldn't find my way home. I couldn't find my parents. I couldn't see my future. I was...nothing. The dependency killed me.
So i did all i could do. A crystal sphere of a tear ran down my cheek. From then on, my memory failed me. It was dreadful enough for me to forget it. I just couldn't handle that trauma - the thought of being lost forever. It just seemed inevitable.
Until...my parents did find me, and all that anguish seemed to be washed away. At least, i thought so. But now i realize a new pattern. That dread has evolved. It has grown with me, sown into the behavior and thoughts that i harbour within. I am afraid to get to know others. Why? I do not dare to imagine the day that i might have to be left like that again. But this time, i'm not 5-years-old. So, i've got different ways, greater ways of avoiding those situations. But they've become perhaps, so radical, that the realization just stuns me. I call people, i text people, i email people, with that same fear of being abandoned.
Look what that little piece of dread has become. Unattended, unresolved and left alone. The entire puzzle of loneliness has probably a little, if not everything, to do with that small incident.
On that fine day, fate set a pebble before me and i slipped. Now, i have collected many pebbles and i now see a mountain.
What have i become? Perhaps the only answer is
...the past.
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