Newton’s Law
She knew as the word was forming in her throat, at the exhale of the breath that carried the sound, as it passed her lips, that it was the wrong thing to say. She had said yes.
She had told him yes, and it made her feel just a little bit sick to her stomach. Why had she said yes? She knew she didn’t love him that way; not in the way you should love someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, so why would she tell him yes?
It wasn’t fair to tell him yes and not mean it. It set things in motion. What external forces were going to stop what that word had set in motion?
That yes led to another yes and another and another. Until she no longer knew how to say anything else. It’s not that she didn’t want to. She wanted to scream “NO!” at the top of her lungs and stop the stream, but her throat had grown so accustomed to saying yes, she couldn’t form an “n”.
So she started small. She changed the tone of how she said yes. She changed the inflection of how she said yes. She changed the pitch of how she said yes. And he noticed. And he didn’t like it.
Then she stopped saying it so regularly. One less yes per day and before she knew it, she was down to one final yes. She saved that yes, just in case she needed it some day.
And finally the time came when he said to her, “I don’t love you anymore, and I don’t think you ever really loved me like I loved you. I want to be free to find another who will love me like I deserve to be loved, and you can be free to find that too. Will you give me a divorce?”
And she said yes. And this time, she really meant it.
*This was written in response to a post I read the other day on The Things I See Up Here, regarding The Yes Movement. It got me thinking about all the times I have said yes in my life, and all the things that simple word sets in motion. I wish I could’ve come up with a really uplifting, positive yes story, but the first thing that came to my mind was a time when I had said yes and didn’t really mean yes. Such a double-sided coin is yes, that it reminds of some of my favorite Rush Lyrics, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”. In other words, if you don’t say yes, then in essence you are saying no.
Yes can be scary as hell sometimes. Yes means taking a risk and jumping without a safety net. Yes can be exhilarating. You never know how yes is going to wind up, or where yes might take you. Yes may turn out to be a very valuable lesson, or yes may be the love of your life. I am saying yes a lot more these days; yes to my happiness, and yes to knowing I deserve good stuff in my life. What do you want to say yes to? Just say yes, and set some things in motion in your life!
Fat Bottom Girl Said What 