A Long-Overdue Spring from the Future
Two more chances before the calendar says it’s too late to make amends. The woman is lucky that her birthday is not until the very end of the year, but still, these days time seems to be ticking slightly faster than it used to feel — at least to her — so she can never be sure if it is enough at all to begin with.
But we’ve gone way past the regretting phase now, at least. In this room, there are only plain walls, blank canvases, and empty journals — all waiting for a touch of a staining ink or a drop of a lustrous paint. All the tools one would need to start a perplexing story over.
In this final revision of the saga, the woman would finally become her own heroine, and all the men in their fancy suits and pretty faces would only become a series of cameos — never too important to take away the spotlight from her.
In this version of her narrative, the woman would’ve found the courage she needed to let her guard’s down where love was promised. Days, or weeks, and months, even years from then on, the woman would no longer wake up in the middle of the night, thinking if she had allowed herself enough to accept compassion, care, and affection that were once offered — for the woman would finally be at peace with how she echoes the gestures and how much she chooses to embrace. Gone would be the days where the woman wonders if she had locked herself away from all the things she’s very much worthy of. No more questions ricocheting off the invisible walls when nobody was around to give her answers. The woman would have all sorts of answers — but she would no longer feel the urge to ask the same questions.
In this room, there would be finally paintings as serenely joyful as Monet’s, snippets of warm-toned photographs from the spring or maybe summer, and pages of feel-good, lighthearted stories that do not contain any what-ifs. The woman would have created a space of her own elements, a gallery of her transfiguration if she might — all laid out so intentionally purposeful of showcasing the metamorphosis that one’s immediate thought when stepping inside it would be, “A reborn took place in this very place, and that lucky someone seems to have been liberated from all the weighing aches.” The aches she thought to have inflicted on her own, to her own self, by keeping all the barricades up when she could’ve welcomed every kindness that came her way instead.
Sunrays would peek through the blinds and the woman would no longer squint her eyes and look the other way. The woman would, on the contrary, walk towards the source of lights and pull up the shades, bathe in its silvery glow, welcoming the piercing warmth. The woman would perhaps be reminded of a blurry face that taught her about his appreciation towards the sunshine, for he would walk miles whenever the Sun was out simply because he loved being immersed among hundreds of unfamiliar lives he encountered with every walk; or another blurry face that once smiled so widely under the afternoon’s tangerine shades when they were walking among the pillars and the freshly-mowed grass. But she would no longer be ashamed for remembering. Instead, she would thank them. And other faces before and in-between them. The then-supporting actors who are now no more than cameos in a tale of her own. The woman would’ve appreciated them for they have left imprints so remarkably important that she could now roam on her own thanks to the footprints they have created before her.
By then, the woman would no longer have felt that she owed herself something, or anything at all. The curiosity would have been satisfied from the amends she would’ve made with herself, and the paths would have been cleared of all wild grasses, made pleasant for the next passersby to walk along.
Spring would bloom, and with it comes along the tranquillity she’d been promised. The fences that safeguard her fortress would’ve collapsed, but that would’ve been what the woman prefers, to hint an invitation for those who happen to pass through to gaze at her carefully-crafted garden of lilies and magnolias. It would smell as if the Earth gives birth to all sorts of fresh nectars, and the butterflies would gather around and flutter their polychromatic wings in her presence. For once, the woman would realize that she finds joy when she lets her fortress to be this lively.
The woman stares at the vacant room. It still has nothing, but it’s entirely hers to claim now. All streaks of smeared graffiti from one’s anger are no more, all the broken vases and dead petals are gone, all the tattered fabrics of bed sheets full of stains of teardrops are discarded for good. It still has nothing, but it’s the fresh start she ultimately needs. With every minute that passes, she would be an inch closer towards the peace, closure, and forgiveness she deserves more than anything.
