People started worrying about me. I was like an owl staring at the ceiling the whole night. I liked being in the dark. Sweetie, you should get some sleep, my mom had said. These words became her prayer before bed. I nodded and went to bed as I used to every day. The room was filled with silence. A silence that was scary and lonely at the same time. A teardrop sprouted in my right eye. I turned the other side as I didn’t want my mom to wake up to my sobbing. I said to myself you are strong and bold, don’t be afraid.
I started to think about all the hurtful memories which were buried inside my mind. The worst part was that I was still searching for a reason to blame myself. The searching was endless but I still tried so that I could reduce the pain of not being able to accept the doings of the people who I once loved.
I turned right and then to the left and only felt more uneasy. I caught hold of my blanket and crumpled it harshly as an attempt to get hold of myself by crushing the haunting memories. Even if I knew that this is not going to work I kept trying because I didn’t know what else to do. I kept telling myself that I am not supposed to cry. Little did I know tears weren’t under my control. They flowed as I sat up straight covered in a fluffy blanket under a dark ceiling. I wiped my tears and went over my skin, searching for traces as I felt my mom turning toward my side. I didn’t want her to know because I didn’t want her to worry. This is the untold story of my tears.
This became my routine and my mind went on a searching mission every night and tried to get some rest in the morning when the house is noisy.
All this time I didn’t realize that I got caught up in the past so much that I was slowly forgetting how to differentiate between my present and the long-gone past.
Even at this time, I was telling everyone around me to be happy and to live in the moment. How stupid could I be, going around giving advice to people that I can’t follow myself? One day when I was passing through the park taking a regular stroll, a kid who I used to talk to came up to me and told me the story of him winning a medal in his swimming competition. He thanked me and said I won because I had told him not to cry over my failure and take it as a lesson to find a way to move forward. This hit me hard. Why can’t I listen to my own advice? (Probably because no one said it back to me). If I would have followed it, things would have been so different now.
It is fine to cry over the past but it is not fine when you are hung up on it. The mistake was probably not yours. It’s okay even if you made the mistake. It is not easy to move on but it is a step worth taking. Take some time to realize your mistakes and learn your lessons from it so that you could live in the moment with all your heart and move forward in the journey of life.
