Change. It can’t be pleasant for everyone. Neither can it be harsh for all. Change has two opposite effects on people. One’s loss might be another’s gain. When one person wins the others inevitably lose. A single change can offer both joy and grief at the same time. After all that’s what change and life are all about. We can’t ask for change nor can we choose what it will be. A short story about a change and its consequences.
A Change
I gripped at the steering wheel in
anger, knuckles white. Beside me Carla sat fuming. I had definitely decided
that the drift between us and our ‘cherished’ daughter was final. That’s when I
registered the feeling of the car rolling. The last thing I see is a face disappearing
with the flames. I only thanked god that my young girl had decided not to
accompany us.
The Losses
I let the rainfall mix with my tears. I
never thought I would cry over them: that I would feel pain in losing
them. I was in my hideout, the only one
that gave me solace after a big blowout. However now there is nothing to hide
from in this house. Nothing left to detest. My long time ‘wish’ had come true.
I was going to get a new ‘set’ of parents. The ones who I had always detested
were gone, dead. I always thought that I wanted someone else who would not hate
me so much, who liked me for who I am and not for whom I wasn’t. And now when
there is nothing but a void for what used to teach me, I know I had in some
ways always relied on it. And now when I get another chance, I realize that I
never really wanted one. I always had to be content but I wasn’t. I hated them
for being them, for changing me and in bad moments, even destroying me. I knew
too little then. It is now that they have destroyed me. And this time it is irrevocably.
And now I can’t even hate them for it. My
new caretakers, I can’t call them anything else, were going to arrive in an
hour to take me from the one place I called home. I had now started hating two
new people, now even before I knew them.
The wind blew out two leaves from the
almost barren tree, now left with just another one. Yes, that was me, me who
was going to have to grit my teeth and tough it all out to survive. The worse
thing was that I was not even sure that I should try. Now I just wish I had
gone with them to that stupid party. They had tried a lot of ways to get me to
come. But now they had given up, on life and on me. Maybe it didn't change
much. I wish it had in the way I wanted it to. I loathed it now, that change
that I had wished for and the one I was sure would be good.
The Gains
I was almost nauseous with the feelings
of worry and excitement desperately trying to win me over. And this battle was
one of those ones which I never think I will ever learn the outcome. Soon I was going to have somebody to call my
own. Somebody who would completely belong to me, look up to me and love me. As
Matthew drove down the car surprisingly fast for his ‘never-break-rules’
attitude, I allowed myself to consider the girl that we were now going to
adopt. Her parents had died unexpectedly. Matthew was not exactly the happiest
person when I proposed the idea of taking a ‘traumatized’ child under our wing.
Traumatized in his eyes, that is. But I was sure that the simple psychology of
children would help her put her past behind her soon enough.
In a way the death of her parents was a
blessing to me. After all it had given me a chance to have a new future. A
future with me being a happy mother and she being my adoring daughter. Maybe it
will be a new future for her as well. Perhaps she will be happier with me.
Maybe I am just trying to make myself believe that it will work out.
And then, no
matter how it effects you a change will change you.
~ Niranjana Menon
