My unsaid words

Just like every day, the gift shop I worked at after school, was crowded and since there were just two of us working, I merely had anytime to breathe. Jason, my only co-worker and I were paid peanuts, but we dared not ask for a raise. The boss here was a real tyrant, a living vampire sucking the blood out of his employees, a miser who would not allow even the slightest penny discount nor raise our salary despite our hard work, a modern example of Hitler, torturing people, turning us into zombies.

 How I wished I could actually spit each of these words with more insults in his face, the way I would rehearse every night before going to sleep, but every time he would come in front of me, I would just try to tell him my opinion hesitantly in the nicest way possible and bear more insults from him.

That was one trait of my personality that I wish I would learn how to overcome. But the good side of working at the gift shop was that I got to meet different types of people with different attitudes.

Each of our clients or suppliers seemed to be interesting characters. For example, we have a supplier of paintings who likes to call himself a successful and talented artist but clearly nobody ever heard of his name. The thing was that neither me nor Jason never really grasped what was drawn on his paintings. Once his painting was labelled a horse, but we could not even see the head nor the tail of the horse. There was another painting which he described as a woman eating an apple, but it looked more like it was the apple who was eating the woman.

I hated the way he would flaunt himself and his paintings every time he would come to the shop. In my head, I had already told him the truth about how nonsensical his paintings were and despicable he was as a person many times already, but those were words that could only be said for an infinite amount in my head, and never once from my mouth. In reality, every time I would get to meet him, I would just ask him nicely to explain to me the content of his painting and scratch my head foolishly when his explanations would make absolutely no sense. I guess our boss would still buy these paintings because, as miser as he is, those paintings were cheaper than authentic ones.

But sometimes I do wish I could actually speak up more of my mind instead of just formulating them and keeping them confined in there.

There was one rich couple who had come to our shop the other day . Basically, it was those typical businessman husbands, dressed in a suit and tie, who got no time to care for their wife. Many times, we’ve welcomed such couples at the gift shop and many times, I had wanted to give a piece of my mind to those arrogant husbands. But of course, never have I really managed to do so except for that one time.

 The man was here to buy a present for his mother on her birthday. While the wife’s eyes had also caught the beautiful dancing queen crystal ball that we had just displayed in the morning, the man had already decided to buy only one for his mother. The wife was also hesitant to ask her husband to buy her a present too. So I finally decided to intervene. Already, I was angered by the way he would treat his wife with so much disrespect, shouting at her at various points, sometimes for tripping, sometimes for not following him. What was she? A wife or a servant?

“Oh I see the lady here is also struck by the beauty of our new item, why not buy one for your wife as well, Sir? I’m sure it would cost nothing for a wealthy person like you to buy two crystal balls instead of one! ” I suggested sarcastically, though in my head it was formulated as “You rich people can be such misers sometimes! For all your bad behaviour towards your wife, the least you could do is to buy her a present! Not out of love maybe because you seem to be lacking affection yourself, where will you get to give others? But at least to thank her for tolerating an insolent like you!”

The man did not even bother to turn to her wife who was looking at her with pleading eyes and coldly replied; “It’s my mother’s birthday! Not hers! Now just give me one of those crystal balls quickly.”

I was baffled at such a rude attitude.

“You do not need an occasion to treat your wife.” I replied.

“Listen girl! I do not need your advice on how or when to treat my wife. Just do the work you are paid for! And besides you’re wasting my time! Just quickly wrap one of those before I get you fired from here!” He replied rudely and my blood started boiling.

“Oh hey you mister! How dare you talk to me like that? Clearly the mother you are buying the gift for, must regret having lived till now seeing the insolent son she has begotten! Thank God that I’m neither your mother nor your wife or I would have long time sent you twenty miles down earth! You seriously need to learn some good manners!”

But I think the slightest intervention before was already enough for me, if not too much already. So I kept my words for myself, packed just one crystal ball for the man and sobbed as I watched the sad lady leave with his husband.

 Similarly, there are many such occasions that happen here at the shop that give me opportunities to speak up my mind, but my mouth just chooses to speak the bare minimum. Some may think that maybe because it’s my workplace, I chose to keep quiet but even at home or at school I prefer to just let it go.

When my aunt would come home and start praising her daughter who is the same age as me, while trying to make me feel inferior, I wish I could actually tell her about the black deeds of her daughter who likes to party till late night, gets drunk, bullies the weak students and cheats on her exams. In fact, I had already mustered the courage to just spit everything out many times but the cold stare from my dad would make me back off. There was that one time when my father was not home when my aunt had come again to flaunt her daughter. My mother had given me the green signal but instead of all the abuses I had kept for her, in the end, I thought it would be impolite from my side and simply told her: “Yeah but the world is a cruel place. You better keep hold of your daughter instead of looking for the ways she’s overriding others!” Even my mother was stunned as she was expecting more from me.

At school also, I wish I could just let everything out of my mind, but something inside me always refrains me from doing so.  Every morning before going to school I would practice about how I was going to tell my English teacher that she comes to school to teach and not to flirt with the boys and that she should concentrate more on her work so that we would get better grades but, in the end, when I was finally in front of her, my mind went blank and I ended up telling her only to give us better explanations so that we would get better grades.

But my biggest disappointment so far has been the incident with my boy bestfriend, on whom I’ve always bore a huge crush since childhood. Since the day we became classmates, I decided to confess my feelings in hope he would reciprocate them, but I was waiting for the perfect opportunity. I had practiced a whole paragraph for a month before, one day, while going to work after school, I noticed him alone in a café and he noticed me too. He waved at me to come join him. The weather was rainy. ‘The perfect romantic moment’, I thought.

I quickly ran inside and sat in front of him. I was closing my umbrella when he started playing my hairs trying to shake off the droplets of water that had stuck in between them. My heartbeat started racing and my smile started fading as my eyes locked in his. I started feeling my limbs shaking as I opened my mouth to start talking.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Y-Ye-Yeah!” I said grinning.

He frowned. “Oh you want to eat something?” He was about to get up and walk to the counter to order something for me when I held his hand and pulled him back on his seat.

“Actually I needed to tell you something.” I said in one breath.

“Yeah sure!”

“Ac… Actually, …” I was nervously biting my lips. “I just wanted to say that you’ve been an amazing friend to me. I really appreciated the way you have been here for me every time, through ups and downs. Throughout those years, we’ve grown up so much, but we were always here for each other. I really … appreciated it.”  And I went numb and could not continue.

“Oh but that’s natural! I’ll always be here for you.” He responded with a smile. “And that’s all you wanted to say?” He frowned. Being my best friend, he knew how I was never able to finish what was on my mind, so he asked to confirm and foolish as I was, I nodded and excused myself to go home.

From then on, I had given up on the idea to ever confess my feelings to him and thought I was already lucky enough to have him as my bestfriend.

Likewise, what I really say in my life is just a preview of what really is in my mind. What comes out of my mouth is just a trailer. The real picture however stays stuck in my mind. If you do not know me, you might think that I am just an ordinary boring girl, timid and not very talkative. But in my head, there is a whole another buzzling world with a totally different side of me, that might shock many if ever those two worlds happen to be interchanged. Something that sometimes I wish could happen.