by Tara De Wet
When a man in a dashing charcoal three-piece suit said he could make me happy, I didn’t expect him to transport me into the confines of my inner psyche.
I was always able to feel every emotion just like everyone, but happiness always felt like a destination that could never reach, like an island in the sky when misery was my earth. I never found the reason why I was never happy, as I never saw the point in looking. I just simply deemed myself a depressed loser and went on with my existence. That was until I met an interesting man at the local supermarket. The man looked to be in his early thirties, wearing a stylish three-piece suit the colour of storm clouds. He wore a mischievous smirk which deepened the dimple in his right cheek. He spoke with a sonorous voice, “I know how to make you happy.”
That sentence alone was enough to send my imagination to strange places, but I quickly recovered and shot Mr. Businessman a quizzical look, causing him to explode with laughter.
It’s not what you think,” he said and held out his hand. “Do you trust me?”
I was about to say “No,” and walk off. This was absurd! How could he make me happy… Though something told me to trust him. It wasn’t like I had anything to lose. I reluctantly shook Mr. B’s hand and in a flash of light, I was transported into darkness.
Dark storm clouds peppered the sky, a stark contrast against the sky’s blood-red hue. All around me tall dead pine trees rose from the obsidian soil which was carpeted with dry brown grass. Large jagged mountains stood tall in the distance, reminding me that this was not a place of freedom.
After recovering from my initial shock of realizing that I was transported to my mind I resolved to look for any cliché signs of happiness, a flourishing patch of greenery, a sliver of sunlight shining through the clouds, perhaps the sounds of mirthful laughter. I found none of that. Instead, I spotted a flag tied to the nearest tree branch with a mockingly cheerful smiley face printed on it. I untied the yellow strip of cloth and suddenly noticed a whole trail of the same flags leading away from the forest. I followed the seemingly innocuous flags and found myself standing before a single white daisy. I raised an eyebrow. This was the key to my happiness.
I plucked the flower from the ground and a memory instantly engulfed my senses; a memory from my childhood. A memory of me watching my father’s white Sedan pull out of the driveway… it never came back. The scene shifted to one of my mother emptying the contents of the rubbish bin onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor, beer and wine bottles spilling out, the clanking a perfect cacophony of noise. She drunkenly and viciously threw bottles in my direction, none hitting its mark. When she finally got frustrated she advanced on me with her fists raised and her permanent scowl mutilating her once beautiful features.
With a gasp, I was brought back to the daisy. The realization hit me like a riptide. The reason I could never be happy was that I thought I never deserved to be. I was never allowed to be! But now I can. “I deserve to be happy!” I announced, my voice carrying on the wind, filling the empty woods. As my words echoed through the forest, golden rays of light filtered through the clouds, the forest flourished under the sunlight and the tall mountains softened into grassy hills and for the first time ever I was happy.
Comentarios