On Waiting

They say waiting is painful, patience is bitter, and anyone who’s ever had to go through days (or even a few hours) of uncertainty, would wholeheartedly agree. It’s inevitable. One of life’s unwelcomed givens that you’re hardly even allowed enough time to open your arms for. Sometimes you choose to wait for something to happen, other times you wait because there’s just no other choice.

Rewinding back to your days of innocence…

You receive a chocolate from your favorite kindergarten teacher, yet you silently take a seat at the corner of your classroom, trying to ignore the ongoing battle between your taste buds and your ethics, for mom said no candy is allowed before lunch at home. You wait. It’s your birthday and your parents have invited everyone from class over for cake, but you never understand why you have to wait for the weekend to party, when your birthday is already today. Counting down the days is all you catch yourself doing through the entire week, and you wait.

You grow a little older and realize that you’re never parting ways with that feeling. Days are wasted away as you daydream about your last day of finals and mentally plan for the holidays. Your grades are shortly coming out, and you’ve already been stressing over that thought weeks before anyone has even mentioned it around. You never find it in you to sleep on the night before they’re out, as if staying up would magically change their fate. In the company of the creepiest imaginary scenarios of how disappointing they might turn out to be, you have no choice but to wait.

You appreciate how heartwarming it can sometimes feel when you finally get to countdown for the arrival of someone you haven’t had the chance to see in years. But then you despise the idea of countdowns when you realize you’ve actually been counting down for the day after which you’re not meant to cross paths with a certain someone ever again, for how their sole existence has brought along so much pain. Waiting to never see a person again causes deeper wounds that waiting to finally see another person can hardly heal, and yet you wait.

You start getting in contact with more people and no matter how many times you’ve been told “We need to talk!” you still freak out every time someone unexpectedly throws it at your face. You toss and turn in bed, trying to list every reason why someone might possibly want to talk to you, then mentally promise to never say this sentence to anyone because of how the disturbing what ifs eat up your brain. You give it too much thought that you don’t realize how much your vicious teeth have been letting it out on your fragile fingernails, especially the ones you’ve spent so much time trying to put back in shape after the last time someone asked to see you out of the blue.

One day, you’re waiting for a call. You get one from an unknown number and feel your heartbeats knocking hard against your chest. You answer, and for some reason your mind makes the voice on the other end sound exactly like that of the person you’ve been waiting to hear, but it’s not. It’s not, and you’re still expected to normally go through the rest of the conversation, blaming the cracks in your voice on a cold you don’t even have, and trying to ignore the tiny anxious droplets of sweat formulating behind your ears. It’s not, and your brain is still expected to function as though it hasn’t just been exposed to a paralyzing disappointment. It’s not, and you listen as the voice on the other side turns silent for a few seconds; probably trying to stop their own mind from turning your voice into that of someone they’ve been longing to hear.

You’ve been expecting an email for around a week now, but in your mind it feels like years. Every time the phone beeps, your insides collectively tighten. It turns out to be a Facebook thing instead and you start thinking if Mark Zuckerburg ever gave this a thought before creating the app. You continue to catch glimpses of the screen for the rest of the day, thinking it’s lighting up with a notification, when in fact all it brings is a reflection of your room’s anxious walls, as you unconsciously radiate your tension among its every integral part. The more you wait, the more you start doubting yourself. Maybe I’m not good enough, you think. Maybe I should just stick to what I know best.

Or maybe, it’s just not meant to be. Maybe it shouldn’t happen because something else is supposed to make its way into my life, and this might only be getting in the way. Maybe there’s a reason behind it all. I should probably let it go.

You tuck yourself in bed that night, totally content with how things are. Yet the next thing you know is, you’re up at 7 in the morning eagerly checking your phone, in case someone decided to send it after all. You spend some time trying to get back to sleep, only to remember that your subconscious mind has been showing you parts of the awaited email all through the night, and that none of it was real. You realize that deep down, you’ve actually never wanted anything more, despite all the pep talk you’ve been trying with yourself. You eventually stop wishing for a specific reply, and only pray to receive anything that would just help the uncertainty fade away. And you wait.

Sometimes you find yourself waiting for something you’re not even sure it exists. Like waiting to cross paths with someone who would willingly reply to an intense text right away, because they’d know how much it took you to press send, and how the imaginary scenarios have already started writing themselves up as you wait. Or someone who would willingly listen as you blabber about how much you’re sick of having to wait, while everyone else tells you how much they’ve had enough of your complains. Or someone who would gladly choose to spend the night watching you as you stare at your laptop’s screen, because you just can’t wait to finish your piece.

That someone, who would be the inspiration behind a piece you write on the beauty of what lies ahead of the wait. 🙂