The least expected person
Home Affairs: Sharks & turtles, a love for confrontation, first gifts, a cliché, caffeine consumption, a decision to stay and inaccessible truths.
From the outside, anyone would see a happy family pointing to sea creatures swimming, drawing big circles and twists in a tank. “That’s a shark! Look, the turtle wants to say hi. Oh! The hammerhead!” But we all know the turtle didn't want to say hi. This reminds me of the day I realized I couldn’t explain why I’d decided to buy so many dinosaur-themed clothes and toys for my son. He could barely see, let alone make a distinction between a dinosaur and a surfboard. Why dinos? I thought, they’re extinct, why are we pushing this theme? Why do newborns wear dino prints all over their tiny bodies?
I think what I’m trying to say here is that it’s not about what you go through. It’s more about how you decide to perceive it. It’s totally up to you. And I guess I’m also trying to say that I don’t love that kind of freedom. It’s exhausting, to interpret things and reinterpret them, over and over. To match your vision. To match others’. To make sense of the world. To draw meaning out of thin air.
From the outside, we were a happy family pointing at sea creatures. But had God decided to stream my thoughts for everyone’s entertainment, you would’ve seen a catastrophic scene where, somehow, a (the, mine!) toddler falls in the shark tank and, in less than ten seconds, is eaten alive in front of his (the, me!) helpless mother, who is then irreversibly left with a scar impossible to heal.
Virginia Woolf once wrote: “The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”
We were walking back home after breakfast with a new friend who, just like us, is a new parent. “I don’t like confrontation,” he said after telling us this story of an impertinent cyclist who couldn’t be nice to him and his wife when all they were trying to do was to soothe a crying infant. “I really don’t like confrontation,” he kept going. “Oh, I do,” I interrupted. I could’ve just mentioned cyclists are my least favorite people from the world of sports enthusiasts. But no. I said I like confrontation. And I do. Somehow I thrive when I argue. I suddenly become a fast thinker when I’m in a heated conversation.