Time and Tide wait for none

 

Irony : 

(Noun)

Meaning : a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.

         (Note : Nothing about what happens in this story is amusing or even slightly comedic.)

Example : “The same delicate hands with which she crafted her abode would now dig her grave.”

 

Random memories. The rustling of paper. The intoxicating smell of perfume that she never thought she would miss. Totally random thoughts. Infact, if she closed her eyes and focused hard enough, she could almost feel fingertips slipping away from her.

It all boiled down to one thing : Time. Time had been her ultimate downfall. She kept consoling herself, kept telling herself that her time would come. Why take a risk when destiny had her course charted out already? So she never took a risk. Never travelled, never got on an airplane, never stayed up all night just for the sake of it. 

She spent her whole life just existing, not living. She spent all her time sheltered in her self made bubble, unwilling to explore the world. But all bubbles break eventually, and hers had broken now. It seemed ironic to think that ‘fate’ in whose hands she had placed her life had cruelly pricked her bubble. 

Here she was, on her deathbed, regret coursing through her veins. How did she end up here? What about her destiny? Wasn’t there something great in store for her? And when she finally did realize the answer to her questions, it was too late. She shouldn’t have sat around waiting for destiny to come to guide her. She should’ve been out there making her own destiny. She should’ve known better. She should’ve known that time and tide wait for no one.

Five years ago, her friends had asked her to join them on a holiday to the beach. She remembers the scene crystal clear. The night air tasted of strawberries and thick fog that showed signs of a coming storm. Their expecting eyes shined with anticipation and then looked away from her when she shook her head. “It would be too dangerous,” she had said. 

“I might drown.” 

“The tide might be too high.” 

“I can’t risk it.”

And so, she didn’t go. Her friends had gotten up and walked away. She and her bubble were now the only souls in the dark night. She didn’t really blame them however. Who wanted to be friends with the one girl that refused to do anything that needed her to even remotely get out of her comfort zone? And so she was lonely. Her bubble floated away to the fringes of humanity, watching and waiting for it's time to come.

But she never gave up hope. She knew that one day the universe would have something planned for her. One day her bubble would go places. How naive she was. All those lost opportunities would never come back. If only she had been wiser. If only she could tell her younger self what she knows now. She realized, only too late, that time and tide wait for none.

She was going to leave this world soon, she could feel it. The countdown to the inevitable began. 

10, the ocean she’d never seen; 

9, the plane she’d never flown in; 

8, the pet she’d never adopted; 

7, the firecrackers she’d never burst; 

6, the horror movie she’d never watched; 

5, the night sky she’d never appreciated; 

4, the treehouse she’d refused to sleep in; 

3, the pillow fort she’d never built; 

2, the places she’d never been to; 

1, the regret;

0, she closes her eyes for the last time.

 

Time and tide wait for none.