I Can't Make Ya

I am currently reading this book by Lionel Shriver called The Post-birthday World, where it’s a tale of how one kiss might change a woman’s life, running in a parallel universe sequence. If you’ve watched Gwyneth Paltrow’s movie called Sliding Doors – this is the book version of it.

I’m in the thick of the book right now and it’s another one of those that causes your mind to ponder after you had long put it down, turn down the lights and snuggle deeper into your smelly blankie, waiting for sleep to come.

For Irina, the main character, had everything a woman would want – a good looking chap with a noble and stable job, a career of her own, a pop-corn eating ritual carried out daily, but yet she was not content. And in one of her parallel moment, where she tells her man of 10 years that she was leaving cos they didn’t kiss anymore, the book goes on to say this:

Any images she might have conjured of being beaten about the head or slammed against the wall revealed themselves as the stuff of fantasy, not what she feared but what she craved. Because what he did instead of hit her was far more brutal. He cried.

Yet it did not stop her from running out in the rain to her new man.

Turn down the lights, turn down the bed
Turn down these voices inside my head
Lay down with me, tell me no lies
Just hold me close, don’t patronize me

It seems strange. That these thoughts and the one last night, have been stuck in my head. Alongside the one where – What if I hadn’t plucked up the courage last year and walked out? Where would I be right now?

We could all pretend that we’re happy. That we’re content. That the monsters in the closet are nothing but our imagination. Yet sometimes, we know they are utter lies that we tell ourselves, just so we can face our reflection in the mirror in the mornings.

I’ll close my eyes, then I won’t see
The love you don’t feel when you’re holding me
Morning will come and I’ll do what’s right
Just give me till then to give up this fight
And I will give up this fight

We all know the sense of forbearance, when something has reached the end of the line ~ I'ld like to call it waiting for the other shoe to drop. For some strange reason that each of us hold sacred, instead of doing something about it, we let it go on to the point where it hurts – emotionally, mentally and sometimes physically as well.

What’s the point in doing that?! I ask today. Does it get you any where? Are you doing anyone any favours by martyring yourself in such a manner? If pain has to be inflicted, it has to be inflicted. After all, there have been so many times when we put off going to the dentist until it’s way past opening hours and we’re left suffering ~ shouldn't we have learnt the lesson of the dentist chair by now?!

Sure it’s no walk in the park to come home to an empty house, to have to put up the Christmas tree all by your self and to carry a book to dinner with you. But isn’t that a luxury – the silence of the moment ~ when compared to a self-imposed silence instead?

I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t
Here in the dark, in these lonely hours
I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no you won’t

I’m not being cynical. Nor am I attempting to rain on anyone’s parade. I’m just being realistic. Life is too short to have your bags packed, placed by the door and then unpacked again. And we owe it to ourselves to do what we have to do, even when it's the last thing we wanna do.

Cause I can’t make you love me, if you don’t...

And over time, we'll learn to forgive ourself for coming so close to ruining our own life.. and in the process, the life of another. But hey - it's taken me this long to see all this.. someday, you'll see it too.