Tag: sadness

Posted on in Blog

There is no straight path out of a broken heart

I thought that sadness was something linear, like the passage of time. That it would decrease as the weeks went by and I would feel better each day.

I thought sadness looked something like this:

Sadness graph - A linear line showing how sadness decreases over time

But the more I got to know sadness, the more it looked like this:

Sadness graph - a spiky graph that shows sadness zigzags up and down

A zigzaggy shape, with spikes that go up and down.

Sometimes the sadness builds up to extreme anger, then dies down again. Like a broken heartbeat.

It’s strange to think that time heals everything when time and sadness don’t move in the same direction.

Time moves forward. Sadness moves up and down.

Time wants me to get up, go to work, eat lunch, catch the bus.

Sadness wants me to stop.

Time says it won’t wait for me.

Sadness wants me to go to his house, knock on his door and beg for an apology.

Time says I don’t have time for that.

Sadness wants to go back in time.

Time knows it can’t go back.

Sadness argues that he still cares.

Time proves that he doesn’t.

Sadness lives in fantasy.

Time lives in reality.

Time forces me to do the things I don’t want to do.

Perhaps that’s why they say time heals everything.

It’s a force against my bad judgment. It’s the pull of linear events that interrupts this rumination.

It’s the moon to my tide.

Before today, it terrified me to find that there was no straight path out of a broken heart. The way out was fraught with thorns and fallen branches. One step forward opened fresh wounds. One misstep took me to a dark place. In the midst of all the pain, the path left behind, became deceitfully safer than the path forward.

As I was contemplating which path to take, time showed up and whispered to me:

Hope is in the future, pain is in the past.

So fixing on the road ahead, I took one step forward and saw a faint light.

It is not much, but it is where I am, in my journey out of heartbreak.

Posted on in Blog

A little ray of sunshine

There are times in our lives where we need something to jolt us out of our sadness. For the past few months I have been sadder than usual, and missing the company of a close friendship that has fallen apart.

It’s difficult for me to know what to do in these situations. I really wish that I could have that close friendship again, but at the same time I feel as though I’m the only one trying to mend it, and it doesn’t make me feel good about myself.

But today, in my usual sad mood, I recieved a little ray of sunshine. A friend of mine messaged our group of friends and told us that there was a travel deal going on.

Does anyone want to go to Japan? was the question I saw when I opened up my phone.

I’m still in the middle of work, but I have to let him know within 2 hours. So without checking with my boss, without checking the itinerary, I make a spontaneous decision and say Yes!

Who knew that I’d start the day feeling sad, only to end up booking a flight to Japan!

The spontaneous decision has jolted me out of a much needed wake up. I like it. I want more of this feeling. And although I know my sadness won’t fade away right now, I’m just glad to have a brief reprieve from the sadness I’ve been feeling in my heart.

I’m sitting here all alone at work, listening to the traffic rushing outside and making sure I finish typing this before I go home.

Sadness is not my forte. I want to get out there and start moving. I hope today will be the start of a happier me.

Posted on in Blog

Finding treasure

I knew somebody who knows of a place to look for gold. Somewhere up North. The first time he contacted me, he was already there, bent over backwards under the baked sun, scanning the ground for gold. He used a tiny piece of equipment, the picture he sent me wasn’t too clear, but there amongst the sludge of grime and dirt were specs of gold. It wasn’t much, he grunted.

Later on, he showed me his collection of gems. Emerald, pearl, and sapphire. I even got some for my birthday. Not the store-bought ones that people give each other on special occasions, but the raw ones. Tiny, tiny stones. And he even proved to me that they were real, with that little equipment of his that buzzed when it touched genuine stone. He knew his stones. Even his last name meant stone.

I thought he was either a con man, or a black market dealer, someone who shouldn’t be trusted.

But I didn’t know anybody like that, so I found him interesting to talk to.

I uncovered facts about him. He was a loner of sorts who travelled around the world, but he could carry on a conversation with ease and make someone feel as though they were being listened to.

I taught him what a metaphor was by giving him a rose.

Some time later, when I came back from my trip overseas, I found him alone and sunken. He wasn’t the same person anymore. He lost his attentiveness, his soft-spoken voice and his sense of curiosity about people.

Genuine stone never loses its shine, but this stone lost his.

The trouble with using an equipment to find treasure is that sometimes machines can get faulty or stuck. He had scanned his equipment over the piece of ground, and it had passed over the single most biggest treasure he could have ever found, and it didn’t buzz.

Sometimes there are no easy ways of knowing when we’ve found our treasure or when we’ve lost it. I often wonder, where did that person go? The one that bent his back looking for treasure under the hot baked sun. He no longer does that anymore. Instead, he sits there on the couch, watching TV, letting other people find his treasure.

The treasure seeker couldn’t even see the gold that was right in front of him.

Stones are put under pressure to see what they are made of.