Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

You are a jerk, she hurled the sentence at me. Startled I looked up at her. What was she talking about? I had no clue. This was getting too tiresome. Just when I would think that everything was going smooth, all ruffled feathers have now been set in place, she would throw a bolt out of the blue. I racked my brains as we stood in silence staring at each other trying to figure out what had happened to set her off like that.
“…and the worst thing is that you do not even realize when your are being such a jerk…” she said.

I shook my head. There was nothing else I could do. Of course I did not realize it. How the heck was I supposed to realize it when not a couple of hours ago she was clinging to me, laughing at my jokes and seemed to be having a good time? Yes, she had been quieter than usual while we were driving back but I thought she was tired and had kept quiet. I should have known better.
.

“Well! I am waiting for an explanation” she screamed.

I looked at her. No, not again please, I pleaded with my eyes but she was in no mood to listen, let alone read my eyes. I started to walk away realizing the futility of the situation.

“Oh no! you are not..” she said as she lunged at me catching me by my shoulder.

“Let me go…” I said simply. She could not have missed the rage inside me that made my words shake just a trifle. She let go off my hand slowly and I walked outside, neither of us saying a word.

The night was crisp and clear. It has just rained and everything around me seemed to be freshly laundered. The roads glistened, the darkness of them competing with that of the night. The dusty exteriors had vanished and gleamed. There was not a soul to be heard. Just the crunching of my feet on the gravel.

My mind was a blank. I did not want to think about anything since thinking would surely bring the unplesantness of what had just occured rushing back. So I did not think. I just walked. Head hung low. Did not look where I was going. Crossed streets, walked blocks, across the closed doors and stores, under street lamps where ghoslty shadows followed me. I just walked. Without a thought. Without a care. When I looked up at last I was standing next to a sign. It said - No outlet. I kept staring at it. I looked at the street stretching in front of me. A stretch of beauty extended before my eyes. I could not take my eyes off it.

I looked at the time. Way past midnight. I must have been walking for atleast a couple of hours. Suddenly I was tired. I did not want to take the street anymore. I just wanted to go home and sleep. Sleep the night off, sleep everything that preceded it off away. I turned back. No one way streets for me tonight. It was time to go back. But I was so tired. Suddenly I could not move a foot. It was like my strength had been stretched so tight, that it just gave up on me and refused to budge. So I sat down. Under the lamp. My shadow merging into me. I leaned against the lamp willing for sleep to overtake me. Instead memories did. Memories of a life. A life that seemed to have been lived a lifetime away.

My life. My own life. Yet it seemed so strange as I thought about it. Like some other person had lived it. That the bitterness and sadness in my life was what made it real and the frothy and happy memories of a life were not of my own but of a stranger. When and how had I ceased to be the person I had been? What had happened? Marriage? Could I pass the blame to that institution? To the woman that came into my life with it? The woman I had chosen for myself.

The woman who could smile and make everything around me seem brighter and happier. The woman who could just look at me from the corner of my eye and turn my world upside down. When she walked towards me I would feel like I had the entire world at my feet. Beautiful. Delicate and so out of this world. When she talked I would just stare at her not really listening to what she was saying but just being an audience to the range of emotions crossing her face that gave her beauty so many faces.

“You are not listening…are you?” she would ask. I would smile nervously and she would walk away in a huff. The usual roothna/manaana scene would follow. There would be so much drama that the roles would be reversed in a matter of minutes. Time and again. That memory brought a smile to my face. Have to hand it to memories, no matter where your life takes you a happy memory remains just that. Happy. No matter what sadness engulfs the characters in the memory, the memory itself remains untouched. And no matter how hard you try to forget memories, they stay with you. Right until your death. Who knows? Maybe even after that! The good, bad and the ugly. I had seen the good, I was seeing the bad and I wonder if ugly was right around the corner.

How could MY life head that way? My life? So many times I had seen other people’s sadness, their compromises and had always had this superior kind of feeling that my life was never going to be like that. That we were going to be different. That I was going to be different. I knew exactly where I wanted it to go and I was going to make sure I reached that point and yet here I was in the dead of night, dressed in my finest but now crumpled clothes, sitting under a lamp, not a soul to be seen around, reluctant to go home. Like a homeless person. Only I had a home. Yes I had a home. So What was I doing here? I got up and walked back.

Damn! I had forgotten to take the keys with me. Why do I always insist on doing such stupid things? I stood at the door like the fool I was - gaping. This was the pits. Summoning her by knocking on the door was the last thing I wanted to do but what other choice did I have? Surely she would not have fallen asleep. There was no other go, I had to knock. Just as I was getting ready to, the door opened. She stood there just as I had left her. In all her fine but now crumpled clothes. Her face was puffed up. Tears were still streaming out…

“Where were you? Where the heck were you?..” she said as she flew into my arms.
“I am sorry…I am so sorry…”

I sighed. The same story. The same ending. But for how long? I hugged her back. I wished life also had an ending like all those stories. But unfortunately it does not. The only ending it has is death and until that time the story cannot end. It has to go on. But I could clearly see the beginning to the end…could I not?