Stop Fighting

It was a stupid little thing. A heart-shaped locket dangling at the end of a sliver thread necklace. “A worthless piece of shit” is how my dad described it when he handed it down to me. I had a feeling its’ transition from my grandfather to my dad had been a little bit more ceremonious but for me it was just shoved in my chest during one of my parents’ incessant fights.

I had listened to them fight for hours that day. I would think in my head of all the ways I could go downstairs and get them to stop. ‘Could you fight outside?’ I imagined piping up with more confidence than I had ever shown. ‘Or go for a drive? That way we wouldn’t have to know how cruel you can be to each other’ I would envision myself saying. I knew I would never actually say that. For as much as I hated hearing them fight, I loved my parents. It was part of the reason it was so difficult to hear. I couldn’t bring myself to say something that would bring their attention to how much they were hurting me. Of how agonising it felt for me to listen to them curse and swear at each other with words I would never say and sometimes didn’t recognise. To be pulling at my hair, scratching at my arms and biting my fingernails while I wait to hear how far their fight would go. It was my sister who would be the one to interrupt them. She was always less shaken than me, or at least that is how she appeared. “Stop fighting!” she would yell, or “shut up” if it had been particularly grating argument. Not with the plea that I felt, but with the stubborn annoyance befitting her teenage angst. Sometimes they would discipline her for using language a fraction as venomous as they had been using moments before. But worst was when they laughed. “We weren’t fighting?” They would say with confused looks on their faces. How could they not have been fighting? They were yelling and swearing and somehow they thought that had simply been a conversation? It always made me fear what a real fight would look like.

But my sister wasn’t there when they really fought.

“Can you please stop fighting!?” I had yelled out after my nerve had finally drawn too thin.

They weren’t laughing this time.

My appeals didn’t detract from their fight. Instead, they used my words as ammunition for their next round of bouts. “See what you’re doing? You’re making him cry!” I overheard as I retreated into my room.

I never did learn what that fight was about. I would press my hands close to my ears and hum loudly so I wouldn’t have to hear. It only half worked. Their more spritely remarks were always delivered with enough clarity that even I couldn’t miss them. But whatever it was about, it did eventually subside. Afterwards my dad came into my room. It clearly more out of a sense of obligation than out of love as he was still fuming. He tried to make the spiel he was always did, that it was just a little fight, and lots of parents have ‘conversations’ like these but it was clear neither of us believed his words.

“Can’t you at least try to love each other?” I had said, soft-spoken and pleading.

He was taken aback for a moment.

“You think it’s easy to love someone? Maybe you can do better,” He shoved the locket into my chest.

“What is it?”

“It’s a worthless piece of shit.”

…

My dad didn’t elaborate on what the locket did, but I managed to figure it out for myself eventually. When I had first opened it, it had simply been a picture of me. For a time, I had thought fondly of my dad. That he would carry around my photo so close to his heart. That wasn’t what he had seen though. To him he would have just seen a photo of himself. Perhaps in the early days mum would be beside him in the photo, but not now.

The locket was special. I don’t know how it came to my grandad, but I know he had found it of great use. He used it to find my grandma, who he loved dearly from the day they met to the day he died. Maybe ‘find’ isn’t the best term for what the locket does. It doesn’t actually do the finding. You have to do that part. If you look into the locket you will see one of two things. At first you will probably see yourself alone. This is what I saw for the first ten years I had the locket. Its true value, is when you meet someone special. When I looked into the locket the first day I met Sasha I saw her in the locket with me. I didn’t quite understand at the time. It had not worked like that when I had met Jess, Andrea, or Miesha. What it does it affirm the person you’re with is someone you will love thereafter. The locket allays all fears of the future. It tells you if things are going to be alright.

It sees the future but its not future proof, which is what my Dad never understood. It doesn’t promise that things will always be perfect with someone. It only tells you that you’re on the right path. Sasha wasn’t with me in the locket every day. Every now and then we’d have bad days, sometimes my fault, sometimes hers, mostly neither, and she would disappear from the locket. But when we worked things out, she would be back there with me. The locket was a water stick. A guiding rod to lasting happiness. My Dad thought it was a promise. That everything would be perfect forever. I don’t think he ever realised he needed to put the work in to keep it that way, nor tell my mum the same.

Which is why I told Sasha about the locket as soon as I could. Together we became obsessed with it. We would check it every day to make sure we were doing everything right. I would bring her flowers, then check the locket, she would write me a song… then check the locket. We would have a fight, then check the locket. After a while, seeing the same photo smiling back at us every day started to wear off, and we became content that we were happy.

After six years of being together, on a whim I looked back at the locket buried deep within a pile of previously important documents. Not only was Sasha missing from the locket, but so was I. When Sasha held it, she didn’t see anything either. We couldn’t figure it out. We would ask each other in a panic if anything was wrong. Was one of us having doubts they weren’t sharing? We reassured each other over and over. We were both happy. We swore by it. Nevertheless, we redoubled our affection. We worked hard on our relationship as though it was broken. Eventually confusion gave way to suspicion. What isn’t she telling me? Was she having an affair? She could just as rightly accuse me of the same. And she did. We started to fight like we never had before. And I couldn’t take it. In the words I would use I could hear the shouts of my Dad. Out of her mouth I could hear the retorts of my mum. I couldn’t bear it and she didn’t want it. So we split.

It hadn’t always been the happiest days of my life, but they were the days I felt safe, secure and loved. Nothing could knock me down so far that I couldn’t be picked back up again. But those days were behind me, and I wouldn’t find love like that again. The locket couldn’t be trusted and I threw it away. With venom and spectacle, I threw it far away, and in pieces.

But it wasn’t broken. It had always worked according to the rules that governed it. It is only now that I realise what it was trying to tell me. Our relationship could not be saved, there was no path we could take to solve it as we were not the reason we couldn’t get our happy ever after.

I had my first suspicions when the oceans started to rise. My doubts subsided when the storms started getting worse. And when diseases ravaged our cities and our families I understood why Sasha and I had disappeared from the locket. It wasn’t just us that would not be getting a happy ending. No one would.