Accents and butterflies

Being content breeds happiness, finding joy in the little that you have, gives you a feeling that the rich spend their fortunes searching for. Wise people also go on to say that love brings happiness that can’t be described, probably because it’s chemical and chemistry is hard. I failed it in first year at varsity, so I would know.

I once was very content, I was so happy that if it was a company I would be a major shareholder. I was in love, I was chemically elevated, so high that I’d probably fail a drugs test. Imagine testing positive, for love. 

But that was a long time ago, so long that I don’t remember what that feeling is like anymore. The only thing more debilitating than succumbing to love is losing it, love like other drugs should come with a warning. A warning in big red letters, “Love is stupid, love is blind and love will make you lose your mind.” But that won’t stop people from going ahead and falling in love, they will do it regardless. They will end up constantly repeating, “Better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all.” A phrase you say so much that it becomes like your name, impossible to forget.

There really is no replacement for that fuzzy feeling induced by someone that you have an intense emotional attraction towards, butterflies, they call it. I haven’t felt, seen or heard from my butterflies in ages. Ever since I committed the unforgivable, I killed them. What would you do?

If you were walking across a desert and found a dog lying in the sand. With both of its hind legs broken, would you walk past and carry on? Leaving it to slowly succumb to the enchanting lullaby of death. Would you let the poor animal suffer in thirst and pain, with the vultures circling ominously above just waiting for it to meet its end so they can feast? Or would you mercifully end its suffering and put it out of its misery, would you look the other way and prolong its agony? Or would you honour it with a quick end?

That’s what I did to my butterflies, the one’s that survived the heart wrenching ordeal that is heartbreak. I smothered them gently, I could not bear leaving them fluttering like a dying bird. The ones that I did not smother, went into exile. My butterflies were dead, or so I thought until she opened her mouth and spoke.

She spoke the Queen’s English like a native of the queen’s land, my curiosity indulged itself in conversation with her. How can a girl sound so British without ever having set foot on its soil? I flattered her the only way I know how, sarcasm. But she was on to me in a flash, “You’re making fun of the way I talk aren’t you?” She said, I neither denied nor confirmed. “It’s you accent,” I said. She protested, “I do not have an accent, this is just how I talk.” A response that colludes with what Jimmy Carr says, he explains that British people don’t speak with an accent, “That’s just how things sound when they’re pronounced correctly.” She laughed, I guess she agrees with Jimmy Carr.

“This place is emptying out quite fast,” I looked at the chairs vacated by people who had filled the air with their loud chit chat. She nodded. I joked that I might have to be getting on home, while looking at my imaginary watch. “Why do people look at their wrists even when they’re not wearing a watch?” A relevant question, which I did not have an answer for at that moment in time, actually I will never have an answer for that. “You don’t really have a curfew right?” She inquired, her face no longer hiding the fact that she was thoroughly enthralled by our conversation. I replied, “My curfew is directly proportional to how interesting this conversation is.” She asked, “So how is your curfew looking right now?” I was coy in my response, “looking way past midnight.”

“Do you want a formula?” I asked her, wanting to know if she thought dancing was as methodical as science is. Geologists and environmentalists are not supposed to get along, and they are definitely supposed to be dancing together. But there I was rhythmically coordinating with the enemy, and I was enjoying it. She was smiling, I was smiling. “What are you doing, I am trying to follow you,” as I messed up the steps in the simplest dance on earth. I assured her that there was no way she would be able to follow what I did, not even I could follow what I had just done.

And then it happened, I felt an inkling of warmth. A fraction of fuzziness, deep in the cold excuse of a heart that I call my own. It couldn’t be, they were all dead. But I felt it, I felt a flutter, my butterflies had life left in them. My first reaction was to deny the possibility of any feeling towards her at all, when you’ve been miserable for long enough you start question the intentions of happiness. You start thinking you don’t deserve to find happiness, even if it’s brief.  But I ignored my cynical self-destructive negativity. I was going to milk this for what it was worth, and I was going to enjoy it. It’s not every day you meet, talk and dance with a girl with a British accent so thick you can’t help but make fun of it. 

“I am laughing with and not at you,” I said as our eyes locked, I’d forgotten what the joke was about the minute her eyes pulled me in. “Why didn’t you just ask for my number, who uses the word digits?” She said, as I hid my embarrassment. Girls are not my strong point, give me science any day, girls are worse than calculus. But that didn’t matter, for a while nothing mattered.

“Saturday night well spent”, I said to myself as I got home later that night. The girls that make you feel things are the ones you run from, they are also the ones you keep running back to. To me, she is an enigma, she made my butterflies rise from the dead like Jesus (Ignore the blasphemous nature of this statement).