It’s been an official 7 days since I’ve last talked to her or even seen her post. Soon, I’ll be counting down weeks, not days. Months instead of weeks. Years that has passed by. And eventually, before I take my last breath, she becomes an entry in a list of “what ifs?” in this lifetime.

Doors slamming shut. Worn out voice boxes. Soggy tissues. Bloodshot eyes. We’ve all been there. Fights. Breakups. Losses. What regrets do we have? What are things that we have said or done that we wish we could simply take back but we can’t? Or things that we wish happened, but didn’t and now, couldn’t? How often does that happen with you?

Growing up, my mother and I fought a lot. But I know losing her would kill me. Remember that scene from the Lion King where Simba kept pushing Mufasa after the stampede, to wake up his dad? My mom used to play dead with me as a kid, for fun, and it made me angry. She thought it was a joke but internally, I was crying (eventually, externally). I learned from a young age that even though we may fight, may have disagreements, or may temporarily hate each other, I’d rather not lose the people that mean a lot to me.

Let’s talk it out, shall we?

I never want to be in a situation where I’m in a point of no return. Just imagine, telling your loved ones that you hate them, only because it was a spur of the moment feeling. And the next minute, you witness them dying in your arms. Or worse, you didn’t have a chance to even be there at their last second of existence, with no way of taking back what you said. To let them know how much they mean to you. It’s not that I’m afraid of ghosts, they’re not real. I’m afraid of what haunts me internally: unfinished business.

Do you ever have that feeling? Of replaying a certain scene in your life, with a slight variation in chain of events, with possibly a better resolution? How would life be like now if it never happened? If I did this instead? It’ll eat at you and that’s where you’re not living in the now, your heart is trapped in the then. It’s not as if every and all unfinished business is fatal or serious. Sometimes, it could be for the best. Hindsight is 20/20, I get it.

But what if it was never in your control to begin with? That you didn’t have a chance to make what you want happen? What and how can we learn from it? We can simply think “Oh, it’s not my fault. I can move on.” I believe it’s easier to move on for things that are our fault or situations where we actually learned something, because it’s tangible. But what if you didn’t take anything from it? What if it’s the same lesson?

That life is unfair. This is probably the most common reason. And for cases like these where I’m shrugging to myself, not knowing why things went down the way they went down, just makes me shake my head.

 

Is it simply for the best? Is it simply just unfair? Or am I being played with by some omnipotent hand?

 

I wonder…