The hands that held too tight

Still taken from Crumb — Bones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD3iG6m44g8

Back in 2015, I wanted to clench happiness so hard I didn't realize that I had hurt my hands instead. I was trapped in the idea of happiness is something that you can feel with your hands but certainly forgot to read the asterisk that says handle with care because the next thing I knew, I already smashed it to bits.

The thing that I held dearly to my heart had slipped through my fingers, disappearing from my sight. The day that I was afraid of eventually happened. I couldn't keep it on my hands—heck, I think I was never ready even when it first came to me easily like a simple 'hi' on my screen. Bruises and fresh line of red greeted me as I looked at the place where it had positioned itself months ago. I sat down, and I let thoughts gushed out from my mind.

The words 'happily ever after' had been imprinted on my brain as an abstract concept that I needed to, at least, put it into some sort of shape. I demanded a concrete existence. I cannot be happy, as I said to myself, if I don't know for sure that the happiness I've been searching for has rested its wings in the palm of my hands—and just like that, I'd done everything to ensure it wouldn't go anywhere again.

Turned out, having it doesn't always mean that you're owning it. It was wrong, if not a dumb idea, to hold onto something just because you want to feel something.

I glanced over my hands for one more time. It tingled.

All I need at that time, I guess, were running water and some time to let it heal itself.

Close to the bottom

It was in mid-November that the message first came on her phone's Whatsapp. "Nar, what if you come with me?"

Despite knowing the context vaguely, for a split second, Nara thought it was just some kind of joke. "Come? As in, come to have a lunch with you?" She added a smiley icon just to make it seemingly more lighthearted. You know, in case the recipient didn't get that she's joking. Of course she's joking.

"No. As in, you're coming to work with me." The sender was Sarah, Nara's former boss in her current office. It's only been 4 months since Sarah's departure—a sort of heartbreaking, sort of ecstatic farewell that ended up with Nara vomited in the office's restroom at 3 in the morning because of the booze. And yet, a woman like Sarah asking Nara to join her? Nara couldn't believe it. Not that she's not capable of doing that, she can—although deep down she has this big pile of self-doubt ready to creep in anytime; she didn't think of it as something serious.

Nara replied, 'Nah... I think I'm not ready yet to do that.'

But in mere seconds the reply got in, 'Then I think..." The next chat arrived. "...we should meet first.'

Seven days after the messages, the two women (which one of them thinks she has yet to learn how to function as a woman) met on a breezy night in an intimate, quiet coffee shop in Melawai (when both of them aren't even a coffee drinker).

***

Nara is a junior in an industry that enjoys telling a captivating story, as much as selling it. Her interest in this industry has brought her to many places since her college, so it wasn't a surprise when she got hired in one place that celebrates young blood like her. There, she met Sarah.

(to be continued)