Silent

04| When She Spoke

Time has rather odd characteristics. Sometimes it flies, and sometimes it does not. Yet, curiously, it is one thing which remains constant. Gravity can be less or more, or not at all. Distance can increase, length can increase and decrease, people die. But time is a constant. It is the same everywhere. It doesn't increase or decrease, it only passes.

Time is disciplined.

What is time?

Time is nothing but the measure of change. When changes occur in the world, we say that time has passed. We cannot hope to stop it, not now, not ever. Nothing is constant. Our lives are present in a constant change- we can never relive our yesterday.

And we might say we wish we could, but believe me, we don't. Our yesterdays have shaped us, made us who we are. And until and unless we wish to be different, or wish to be more ignorant we shouldn't regret our yesterdays.

I know, I know, we still do regret. We regret a lot, and we do sometimes wish to be ignorant, or different. But we shouldn't. We should be happy with ourselves.

Or else we spend all eternity unhappy.

I try my best not to relive in my memory, but it is hard. There are days when I'm not even able to speak a single word to David. Sometimes we grow frustrated with our lack of communication on those days. Especially when I can't stop crying, and tears keep on tumbling down my cheeks because as hard as I try, I can't say anything.

Because even though I'd like to say yes, I don't want to go back to that day. I don't want to go back, because I don't think I'd change anything because I'd be too scared. And I feel so guilty.

And on those days I can't speak at all. I get so scared.

I cry.

Then David comes into my room to see what has been keeping me from coming out to go to school. He sees the growing tear stains on my pillow and always rushes to me and pulls me into his lap. Those days, he takes a holiday.

Those days, I like to believe, are not changeable. Those days are a constant. A different constant from time, because time passes, but those days are all the same. Constant.

I never knew that constants could be of different kinds as well.

David would sit with me, and when I stopped crying, help me speak. We would sit quietly and classify the day as a colour, the people we saw out the window a different colour and so on.

It usually took me a few days to regain my voice enough to go back to school.

After Cameron and I had an ice cream each, we had gone to a park where we had sat in the swings and swung. We had played cricket with a few kids there, and then, famished, we had gone to my house for early dinner. We also had a late dinner. And then an even later dinner, between which we watched three movies.

Cameron's phone kept on ringing the whole time, so he switched it off.

I had never felt so special.

Or so many butterflies.

Cameron had helped me out before. He used to deliver newspapers as a part time job when he was a kid, and that's how he had met me. And David. When it happened two years ago, he stuck by me along with everyone else. Helped me along with everyone else. But everyone else soon forgot and left. He didn't. And it didn't help my growing crush.

Yet today was more special. He had never spent a whole day with me before. I mean he had- he had a year ago, but I had not been so in love with him back then. There hadn't been all these butterflies.