So I turned away
Seeing your ex on the street

By Nikoo G
May 8, 2003
The Iranian

It is strange how life flies by you and in the turns of the moments you catch yourself letting it go too. It feels like a never ending adventure...an animated drama...Of course, if you don't want a great adventure, you can just spend your whole life watching TV. As long as you have a chair to sit in and a remote control to press, what else could you require? Other, perhaps, than a life?

Trouble is, when we set out to get a life, we invariably get a bit of tension to go with it. We find ourselves living out a soap-opera instead of just watching one. But even soap-operas have bright and happy story lines sometimes. So helloooooooooooooo... anyone
out there? Where's that script writer? I want to know how this ends! Maybe I should buy one of those TV magazines that give you the low down on sitcoms a week before each episode or something... that way I am perhaps more prepared for the surprises that might take me!

Just when you think that a certain story has been told, and you feel sure that you have heard it all, and you know every last detail, and you accept that you cannot turn back time... bam! There it comes...

I paced myself into a state of calm as soon as my eyes cut the site of him crossing the road with his hand around her waist... I guess she was his height... long hair... kind of light brown.... didn't see her face until later... but he had the look of a winner on his face... as if he was proving a point... I couldn't figure out what it was though! We never saw eye to
eye... but at that moment I knew that he knew I was behind him and it felt he was making a territorial move!

We come to earth with our eyes and hearts wide open. We arrive with total trust and a willingness to be pleased. We expect every experience to make us happy. We are genuinely surprised if it doesn't.

Then, somehow, from somewhere, cynicism creeps in. We start to become jaded and world-weary. We learn to anticipate trouble. Trouble though, is never polite. It comes whether it is anticipated or not. And sometimes it seems to actively prefer visiting the places where it is being prepared for. This enthusiasm and optimism surely served me far more surprisingly than I ever expected!

Was I supposed to feel something? Is this where I should be upset... or jealous or god knows what? I was surprised of how calm I was...

It has been two, almost two years... our last words to each other face to face must
have been "I love you"... while our faces have been washed by tears... but now I
stood there and watched him pass by...

It isn't like I felt nothing. I felt a rush of blood in my head. But then it felt like everything went away... it was just that one moment that I cast my eye on them and then when I turned away this whole thing went away.. So I decided to stay away!

I guess it was just the feeling of being lonely at that stage; I did need someone to tell me everything is going to be ok. Someone to tell me that today is not the end... and perhaps I was more concerned about the lack of that support.

I looked around and although there were plenty of people around me it felt like no one was there... no one to do the right thing... or say the right thing... or say anything... anything at all...

I guess what they say, "It's not what you do, it's the way you do it" is not true. All too often, it absolutely IS what you do. The way that you do it has nothing to do with it.
Style is irrelevant. Substance is everything.

I thought to myself why can't it all be over quickly? Why must it trundle on and on? Why can't we hold a key conversation once and then move into different territory? Why must there be repetition? Is it because, just as children only learn their letters and numbers by going over them, time and time again, so adults only seem to learn essential emotional lessons through repeated exposure to the same stimuli? Is this a test? What if I fail? And
what if I pass? Do I need to take a different class? Start all over again?

"Why" is an easy question to ask and a difficult one to answer. Because we find it so hard to know why anything ever happens, we become precious about our theories. We pour faith into them and treat them as gospel. As we tend to feel affronted and offended if they are ever challenged, we keep the company of people whose prejudices mirror our own. If our explanations match, we figure, we must be friends.

We try so hard to get it right. To win friends and to influence people. To make choices we can be proud of. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we don't. And sometimes, it all gets a little confusing. We think we are winning but we turn out to be losing. We suspect all is hopeless, then we suddenly see a hidden opportunity. We may well have strong opinions about what's happening in life but can we be sure that these are right? Certainly, if they relate to trying too hard to do anything, they are probably wrong. Then again...how
can we be sure of anything!!!

In an insecure and unreasonable world, how can it possibly be rational to be sure of anything? Certainty is just a shield to hide behind -- a dummy to suck on.

I turned around and had another look. I watched them walk passed. Lack of sleep creates confusion. So too does lack of love. We also get cloudy minds when we are hungry, thirsty or short of time. We can end up with a lot of things to watch for if we want to remain fully on the ball. We must also remember that, when we are not thinking straight, we rarely realise it. We kind of know that we are not at full strength but we don't realise just how far gone we are. So we end up making choices that contribute to our situation.

In my case I turned and walked away. Whether that was to make things better I don't know, but I think at the time I made the right choice!

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