Gray Skies

The thought reversal

Chapter 14

The thought reversal

Amazing how your mind and feelings can switch in a blink of an eye, trust into betrayal, truth into lies, joyous memories into a spool of mockery, happiness to sorrow, love turns into loath, and vice versa. I wonder what causes it. Realisation? Knowing the real truth?  A simple defence mechanism, internally assembled, imprinted in your brain to activate as a response to betrayal or misconception.

Sometimes part of human nature can be mapped on to the way atoms work. All having a nucleus, the center of your friendship or trust, around it are protons and neutrons, circling it religiously, like your friends and family linger around you, your beliefs. If one gets knocked down, the rest get closer to the nucleus, your bond with the rest strengthens, over all you grow weaker and weaker. But people move on, they start talking more to others and the void you might have left in their life, no matter how big or small is filled up, it’s so easily for them and like an old photograph you fade away from their memories. What happens when you are just left with yourself, alone with no one to circle around you? Do you get closer to the others aspects of your life? Religion? Morals?

I’ve lost a lot of friends, mostly because of my selfishness and pride, never meaning to sound like I always have, I’ve managed to push people away without realising and no intent, it’s a thought that eats me inside, like rust eats the underside of a boat, better known as its cancer. Two people this month, my personal best, one a very old friend, the other a beautiful person I had known for almost a year.

How do I do it? How do I stop? How can I make things right?

If I could take all what I had done back, I would, but that’s not just upto me to do, it requires a bigger person to see the guilt that consumes me and how the regret picks on me like a vulture on a dead animals carcass. The word sorry has lost its meaning, incomprehensible, a mere cliché. Regrets are thoughts in your mind which you can’t remember and you can’t forget.

I leaned against my bedroom wall and slid down to the floor. Often I sit there, in the dark, smoking, thinking how life was so simple and carefree when I was younger. Most of the time I go back to when I was 6, one of my fondest memories of my father bringing back a Suzuki 1000 super bike, blue and white with red streaks on the side, the plastic tyres were glossy black with shiny round reflectors on it giving it that authentic look. I use to love that bike, I would ride it all day, parking it like a grown up in the dining room garage under the table but somehow by morning it would move to a more indiscrete location. I had been everywhere on that bike, I kept it with me till my early teens when my mother finally gave the last remains of it to one of our servant boys. Though it was reduced to just a metallic frame, handles, a wooden seat and split tyres, his facial expressions can’t be far off from what my face must have looked like when I first got it.

Of all the memories I cherish, have within me, buried, burnt into my mind, what I think a lot about, along with my family, is her sweet laugh. No one could make her laugh like I did, so I thought. We’d stay up most nights just talking on the phone, I would fall asleep on her every night, but it didn’t matter, because I knew in the morning she would still be mine to hold and love. I remember one time when I was in an insupportable mood, feeling despondent and decided to take it out on her, she always knew how to comfort me. This time was special, she had some great news which she decided not to tell me, and instead she pretended to be miserable with me, like she had the worse day as well. Truth was she didn’t want to tell me her great news and make me feel worse. She never knew that I had found out and she never mentioned it. Its things like those which wither me, it’s what I pine for, it’s when I feel nostalgic: a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.