Consequences

Part One

She doesn’t expect the phone to ring anymore.

Shiny small droplets of water still cling to her as she sits down at the computer. A forwarded email once quoted that there’s nothing as soothing as a hot shower: an unrealised truth, the pleasures of which she was slowly discovering each day. A cold shower makes you shiver; a hot one lets you think. She impatiently tries to connect to the internet: ready to shut herself off from the real world. Ready to be connected to the world she really loves. For she relies on little waves carried by thin wires to bring the solutions to all her problems.

She has never been able to deal with her problems alone. She confides and seeks advice from online friends. And she still doesn’t have a human shoulder to cry on. Just words on a screen. Words that sometimes make it hard to attach a name, a face, a personality to.

Yet she feels that she knows her online friends more than she knows her real life ones. There’s Lissy from America, who’s the same age as her and one of the most fun and supportive people she’s ever ‘met’. There’re the friendly twins - Johnnie and Mariah - from Canada. And then there’s Steve from Australia who’s newly become a dad. They share their music, pictures, problems and advice. Lissy (short for Lindsay) is the one she relies on most though.

The computer refuses to connect. “Stay Connected” quotes the video of one of her favourite bands. But now she’s unconnected. Unconnected to the world that she cares most about. Offline. So now there’s no way of talking to any of them. No way of feeling un-alone, wanted, liked. No way of feeling like she actually belongs somewhere...No way of letting other people solve her problems for her.

Her problems. The problems she thinks and thinks and thinks about. Things have a way of magnifying themselves when you think and think and think about them. Sometimes you can just think about one thing – one person – all the time. It destroys your concentration, conversation and common sense. Even as you listen to songs running through your mind, read human words on a senseless, emotionless, cold machine, go through all the motions of being alive…you keep thinking about that one person – him – whom you can’t help thinking about. Whom you can’t stop thinking about. All the time.

No matter how many times he breaks your heart.

Part two

She cries everyday now. Even the music she plays doesn’t seem to sympathise with her:

“You wanted more

More than I could give…” (Tonic – You Wanted More)

Even the friends she talks to don’t sympathise with her:

“Now do you realize that it was a bad idea?” (A usually sympathetic real life friend)

Even the mother she confides in doesn’t sympathise with her:

“Well, you got what you wanted, after all. I won’t allow you to do it again anyway.”

And the voice inside her tells her to be grateful. He didn’t get his dream date. You did. Many people (like him) don’t even get to see the one that they love each day. You do. Start being grateful for things you have instead of always wanting things you can’t get.

Things she can’t get. Why does she always want what she can’t get? Why can’t she always get what she wants? Even when she wants it so much, so much, so much...

But then she theorizes that if everyone was satisfied with what they had instead of longing for the ‘forbidden fruit’, then this world wouldn’t be the wrecking place it is. And she never understands why people love to dream when dreams hardly ever come true. And when they do, sometimes you wish that they had just remained flimsy webs of the imagination instead of hardening into cold reality.

Because reality brings with it it’s consequences.

Part three

Determination runs through her veins, mixes with her dark dark blood, becomes her lifeline, her last hope of survival. Taking a deep breath, she picks up the phone. She gets through after repeatedly dialing and dialing in defiance of the engaged phone tone.

“FM108.”

”Hi, I wanna request a song, this goes out to…thanks, when will you play it? Thanks, bye.”

“We all need a place to run

Won’t you let me be the one?” (Richard Marx – ‘Take This Heart’)

The one to whom the music is dedicated never hears it. The one with the glossy hair smiling up at her from the framed photograph at her desk. The same photograph which was taken on that fateful day. The same photograph that they both look so beautiful in. The same photograph that now receives her falling tears.

Her favourite band once sung a song called Tears of Pearls. The band that recently effectively broke up. (Oh they call it ‘taking a break from each other for a while’ – that’s what they all say. They never want us to think that they might actually never get back together. She smiles. She supposes that’s what all those parents tell their kids too. All those parents who eventually get divorced. And end up wrecking several lives in the process. “It won’t affect the way things are, we promise.”) Tears of Pearls. Her tears hardly seem precious to her now. She fleetingly remembers what she once read on the internet somewhere: “No man or woman is worth your tears. The ones that are don’t make you cry.” HA.

Oh he makes her cry alright. She never ever lets him know though. It is much better to suffer than make him suffer by feeling guilty. Guilt. Because he can’t love her. The only thing he’s capable of feeling for her anymore. And the way he says ‘I’m so sorry I can’t love you’ in his smile, in his eyes, in his unspoken words and his indifferent behaviour. The way he runs away from the reality that never seemed to chase him until he met her: the one that he loves – the one who doesn’t know. Will never know. He’ll wait ‘4 ever and ever’ for her. In this life and the next. And when she cries, all her tears mock her ‘I’m sorry, but you’re not the one’. ‘You’re a good friend, just not the one.’ Because he really can’t love the one who loves him. Not now and not ever. No matter how many times he breaks her completely, completely.

She watches him in her head, having conversations she’ll never understand. “I really can’t get myself to love her, ok? Nah, no one believes in ‘Love the one you’re with’ anymore. No one believes in having control over themselves anymore either. No one’s an angel. No one can sacrifice all their happiness for someone else. And I CAN’T love her, ok? Stop telling me that. You have to think about your own happiness first. Nah, no one’s selfless. Things don’t work out that way. Um…I dunno...maybe I do take her for granted. But I can’t help it sometimes. She’s...What? Unconditional love? Nah, that’s just a phrase man. Just a phrase that looks good and sounds pretty.”

Nah. Doesn’t sound like him. He’s more likely to say “Unconditional love? Yeah, well, I should know all about that. I love ‘the one’ without expecting anything else in return.”

Unconditional love (noun) Definition: The ability to just give, give, give. Without expecting anything (not even pity, not even friendship, not even sympathy) in return. Because when you do expect something…

Part four

No one wants to hear Steve Vai:

“ Who’s gonna hear you when you’re calling?

Who’s gonna catch you when you’re falling?

Who’s gonna mend you when you’re broken?

Who’s gonna find you when you’re stolen?

Who’s gonna love you?

Well, I’ll be around for a while.”



‘No. I really must stop having conversations in my head. It has a way of destroying whatever shred of sanity I have left. No. I can’t take it anymore. I need a way out. I need a way out. A. Way. Out. PLEASE!’

Words chant a mantra in her head. She can only see two ways out:



a) Make him fall in love with her;

b) Fall out of love with him.

The latter requires a strength of will that she doesn’t posses. The former seems…what could she say about the former? Unguided and unsupported by some kind of supernatural power or superhuman strength, both ways out seem blocked by hard boulders and a heart of stone. Even then, the cold rays of hope seep through the rusted wires of her overwrought mind. Barbed wires. Forbidden territories. She knew her limits. Even then she overstepped them. Now she has to pay the price.

Yes, he hasn’t called her in weeks. She has a feeling he never will. Still, she hasn’t given up till this point in self-humiliation, so why give up now? She lost all self respect a long way back anyway. “Don’t look back, you can never look back…” No. Yes. She believes in having no regrets. At all.

She believes that she has the power to change situations that affect her.

She knows what she’ll do. It’ll be the easiest thing in the world. She knows she had it hidden in one of her drawers. Hidden and waiting. For the right day. The right time. And till now she had no idea how, when, where to use it. And now, suddenly, a brilliant flash of lightning during the thunderstorm, a match struck in the darkness of the deep dark tunnel suddenly…suddenly, she KNEW. It won’t have an effect on him. He doesn’t care. Never did, never will.

He will never love me.

She walks slowly to the right drawer. Switching on the light first. You can’t take a chance in the darkness with these things. She takes it out from the drawer. A cold, evil, gleaming thing. It knows the time has come. It has waited for too long. Like her. It knows it will be put to some use, good or not. It will. And it will perform the deed flawlessly. She walks towards the table. There, beside the half full glass of water. Beside the computer she could not use. Beside the CDs that could not comfort her. Beside the photographs that could not capture and preserve everything she knows she’s lost. Well, one more thing lost won’t make a difference, will it? It’s not worth it anyway. Never worth this pain, this infinite misery, this blinding torture...She WILL do it now, she WILL. She has to.

It’s now or never.

Part five

Suddenly, the telephone beside the computer shatters into a thousand, thousand tiny fragments of sharp plastic.

Sitting on the floor. In the middle of the everything. A thousand, thousand bits of tiny nothingness clinging to every part of her. Smiling.

No, she won’t expect the phone to ring anymore.