A hundred shades.. which one’s mine?

I finally thought I should throw away the pieces of conversation I’ve saved and stored for so long. They’re meaningless, I thought. Then I took them out, and I opened one. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. Conversations scribbled on backs of notebooks, pieces of paper, surreptitiously written when the teacher was saying something we weren’t interested in. The beginning of the friendship, the faint hint of there being more to it than that.. all recorded in black and white and hidden away in a file, apart from the recesses of my mind.

I was lying in bed trying to make sense out of a confused jumble of thoughts. And slowly I succeeded. Empathy, forgiveness, letting go, all of the phrases made sense. As I read these scraps a few minutes later, I felt no anger, instead, I was smiling as I remembered. And I marvelled at how a part of me had been revealed to myself, previously unknown, hidden, and maybe even non existent. Its buried now again, hidden and protected, not to be taken out for some time. Healing. But I now know that when it does, it can be as beautiful as the setting sun. And that’s saying something.

I couldn’t throw them away. Not because I had foolish hopes. Those I'd dispelled as I lay thinking about it. But how can you throw away something that makes you smile and sad at the same time, reminds you of what you held dearest, reassures you about your worth, teaches you about love? Everyone should have memories like this, that they cherish for as long as they can, even if it had a sad ending. Now I know how its better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

But, honestly, it wouldn’t hurt to have a happy ending.

“Maybe there are one hundred shades for explaining the truth, a spectrum of light to dark, depending on the vulnerability of those who have to hear it. Things are not always so clear-cut, they are not either black or white, life just isn’t like that.”

--'Hundred Shades of White', Preethi Nair