Yiren Pontificates

Remember how we always lamented “these things only happen in the movies” when we heard of stories that threatened to turn us all lachrymose? As we age, we accumulate experiences in life and you end up facing these situations directly or indirectly, through a friend or maybe through a relative, no matter how, they bound to happen some day. And when we are caught in those situations, we awake to the reality that we have been so oblivious all these while, we get caught unaware of the very things we subconsciously chose to ignore, we face life as it is, in its purest and most naked form. To hold truth by its bare hands and shake it with a shudder in the heart. 

When I was young, I always thought a family consisted of a father, a mother, grandparents, aunties, uncles, lovely cousins and a sister. I heard stories of broken family, cheating spouses and tragedies of all kinds but I never once took them seriously because they are so distant from me, so far flung that I cannot imagine how terrible and senseless people can get when they muddle in things they should have fled from in the beginning. I never thought stupid people existed, at least not in the number that I have seen recently, but they do and maybe I, unknowingly, am one of them. 

And then I got to know people who were cheated, whose mother got cheated, whose family got torn by the ruthlessly selfish lust of a third party. I sympathized, I pity, I feel sorry and I condemn – a mixture of feelings that was naturally conjured. And then things changed. I got to know of people who were on the side that cheated, whose father cheated and left the first wife, who destroyed happiness for their ruthlessly selfish lust and indiscipline. I tried to sympathize, I tried to understand how things unfolded to their current state – it was a different mixture of feelings.

Many more stories flooded my mind as I left my adolescence and soon enough I was inured to these unfortunate but inevitable parts of life. And then it happened, to my aunt this time round.

When my sister related the story to me, I told her it is part of life and such things do happen. But she rebuked me and it did strike me.

This is not just another person, she is my aunt. All too close for comfort. My heart aches.