Great Expectations

“Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

Expectations. I’ve always had them. The coffee on my breakfast table, the chirping of birds, day, night, flowers, gardens, fresh air, mother in the kitchen, health, well being, money in my pocket……. I’ve been expecting all my life and expect one day to die. I’m so rooted into expectations, that more of them could have given me Asperger’s. I will surely do more than just hide under my sheets if mum calls out, “No sun today, we’re going to have a double night!” Having no ‘day’ will surely be a nightmare. Or maybe not, if you have a physics test in the morning.

  I expect birthday wishes to pour in by the midnight ,of the day before the ‘ageing day’. Those who love me less, wish me on the day itself. Then come the acquaintances(that is basically everyone in school, friends of friends, third cousins, other’s teacher’s………all the ‘friends’ on your Facebook page) who read your birthday wishes on their Facebook feed. Lastly come the haters who for the sake of common courtesy wish you “a belated happy birthday” just to dig it in your face that “you’re not as important as you think you are”.

 It’s 12 am. Our A’ level Math paper the next day.  I have my cellphone by my side. My Whatsapp, Viber, Twitter, Hotmail, Instagram accounts are all ‘logged-into’ and I look at the screen every two minutes. To hear that lovely familiar ping of a message coming in. I’d  just re-reviewed trigonometry, indices, kinematics for what seemed like the fiftieth time. Yet no pinging. Then suddenly the mobile pings. I excitedly grab the phone. But shucks! That’s just my stupid alarm warning me to sleep. I wait for another ten minutes. No text, no email….no nothing! It’s horrible. Well, I’m not going to waste my precious time on these good for nothing friends-cum-enemies. I dig my head into the pillow, and lamenting the shallowness of the entire world, I sleep.

Feeling groggy and disoriented I wake up to the beeping of the alarm, and some where in the background mum is ordering me to get out of the bed,or else “I’d be horribly sorry” Not a good way to wake up on one’s birthday, eh? Especially when you kept dreaming about the sinking of the Titanic the whole darn birthday night.  I jerk myself awake, automatically reaching out for my phone. No birthday wishes at all. A few texts on ‘best of luck for tomorrow girls’ from  our math teacher but that was ALL. And yeah, there was the date glinting in big bold letters on the screen. ‘In your face’ screamed everything. Feeling despondent, yet having no time to spend on brooding I did a last minute screening of formulae, and then ate the breakfast my mum had left me. Not surprisingly, given the general nature of the day, there was no birthday note like the last year’s , “Happy 18’th honey. My lil girl is all grown up :’) ” My mum doesn’t remember my birthday and the rest of the house was asleep save the hens in the backyard. And the ticking of grandfather clock.In my mind’s eye, I showed the middle finger(uh, rude) to the world and stomped out of the door with my backpack. 

EXPECTATION

 

REALITY

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AFTER we were done with the paper my best friend(some best friend), remembered that it was my birthday. ” Uh Ayesha…Oh my God! It’s your birthday….I am sooo sorry!” Then everyone gathered around me an wished me. But no gifts(SOME BIRTHDAY)Anyway they should all thank their lucky stars that my math paper had gone well or else we’d have a real big fight that day. Fight equals lots of eye rolling, ignoring, tossing of hair, caustic remarks etcetera.As for my mum, she had to double the sum on my gift card.

Even though the picture isn’t mine,it pretty much explains my case…..

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Private email accounts are sacred, you expect to sign in when you type the password. Not see a “wrong password or email” warning. Especially if the email account in question has been yours for six long years and you’ve never changed the password or email. Also if you used the email account as you life’s garbage holder. In the sent box everything ranging from cake smeared party pictures to farewell pictures were present. Your numerous stupid draft emails that you never got around to sending because of their awful stupidity. Letters of recommendation. Letters from friends and teachers from a time when people weren’t so much into instant messaging. Basically six years worth of private and well loved stuff that you hope to see forever. However, one weird day of 2012, I signed in to see the “wrong password/email” message. I kept trying to sign in for five long days, not being able to believe that the box won’t open. After that I sent emails from another account to Microsoft. Sadly, I remembered neither my security question, nor any other information since I’d been a twelve year old weirdo who gave importance to nothing. That awkward height spurting, pimply phase of life. So whoops….. six years of ,uh…’valuable material’ and a simple everyday expectation gone down the drain.

Expectations….. they ruin me. I’m expecting another lovely writing challenge next week.

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Weekly Writing Challenge: Great Expectations