Negative of a Negative is Positive...... Is it really?

( I wrote this 2 years back and I can't believe it that I am still stuck here!!! However, things are a bit different now. For instance I have a job that I love more than anything else in the world. I guess that's about it :) Happy reading :) )

“ Two negatives when multiplied, make a positive.” Whoever made this rule, would have surely gone through the same phase in life as I am going through at the moment. How much negative can a person take and how negative can he actually be till he gets something positive out of it?

Two negative numbers when multiplied give a positive number .This is something that we have all learnt in our math class when we were in our prime, though, I could never really understand the logic behind it, till life decided to throw this math problem at my face. So, here I am, sitting in my room on a Friday night, writing this article, trying to understand how closely related is this problem to life.


I always had this tendency to associate negative numbers with sad things and positive numbers with happy things. Hence, I never really liked being asked to mark coordinates in the third quadrant or mark points on the left side of the origin on the number line. It always seemed like a dark side to me. Karma, you see. It comes right back at you. My fear of negative numbers pushed me towards that side of the quadrant. It will be explained further in the following few paragraphs.

Let X-axis represent my love life and Y-axis represent my happiness levels throughout this journey called life. Clichéd, I know. Love and happiness are positively correlated. Again, that’s subjective. But to me, being in love was the happiest feeling ever. And when you take that away from me, you take away my ability to smile. What you are left with is an extremely sad person who seems to find solace in the sad things happening to her. No wonder I have the Meena Kumari complex (a case where a person loves to obsess about their problems, where each problem seems so big that the possibility of a solution seems unbelievable. What seems to be non-existent for others seem as important as the Board Examinations to people like us. This is followed by a series of long chats with the people we confide in, (which in my case is almost everybody), lots and lots of guilt free indulgence in chocolate, writing really long sad poems(which nobody but us can interpret) and lots and lots and lots of crying. So in short, it is a case where let's say for example I love to feel sad about all the things that have gone wrong in my life. And I love to hold on to those feelings so tight that I plan my entire day around my problems ). So now you can see how the lack of love has pushed me down the path of depression. Negative much, right?

To say that someone broke my heart would be an understatement. He walked over it, jumped on it to make sure that it stopped working and when he felt that it was still working, kicked it to others so that they could stomp on it too. I don’t think that this story is new to any of you. It has happened to all of us at one point of time or other. Irrespective of our age, gender, race, nationality, when it comes to love, it spares no one. If we consider all such happenings as events, then clearly, my heartbreak falls under the category of a negative event. Yes, a sad, gloomy, upsetting event. That means that I am on the left side of my number line. The fact that I am vulnerable and I am trying to look for love frantically everywhere doesn’t make things any more positive.

 Anything that is not positive is either 0 or negative. I refuse to stand at 0 because I feel that it’s neutral. I wish I was standing at 0, but 0 is a fresh start. And I don’t think that I am ready for a fresh start. Will I ever be ready? That’s debatable.

If I am not on the positive side of the number line and I am not at 0, that means I am on the negative side of the number line. Sad events happened to me in the past few months (negative) and I became more sad (more negative) but is there anything positive that I got out of it?

Well, if you’re looking for an answer where I say to you that, the very next day, I found my Romeo, I’d be disappointing you. I didn’t. But yes, when somebody left my hand, I had my other hand to take care of it. When somebody who made me cross the road left me, I became more attentive to the traffic, I cared about my safety more instead of trusting someone blindly with my well being. When somebody stopped taking me to nice restaurants, I started cooking.

( I still am very lazy when it comes to cooking, but I am learning, cut me some slack here people, at least I am trying ). When somebody stopped calling me beautiful, I started taking pictures of myself and sending it to my mom to ask if I looked okay and her replies had the ability to make me blush, more than any man ever could. When someone stopped listening to me, I started writing. When someone stopped taking me for a drive, I took the bus more often, looked at people, smiled, looked out of the window and thanked god for the wonderful world. When someone stopped walking with me, I started walking out to the world by travelling. When someone stopped hugging me, well, that’s still a problem whose solution I have not found yet. But I am hopeful. I stopped living in time, I started living in moments.

To summarise my whole experience I’d end by quoting a line from one of my favourite movies-
‘ I looked for it, I didn’t find it, but it doesn’t mean that it does not exist.’

Somewhere, somehow, I became my own Romeo. I know it’s hard. But it’s doable. When life is negative and you become negative, get up. Try to reach 0. It is right there, you just need a little push. Start again. But this time, protect your heart first. That is where it all started.