Be Careful What You Wish For

I thought that I could understand the world, that I could grasp it in my hands and manipulate it, the way my family taught me since I was a child.

Growing up in a spiritual household, I always heard the phrase “Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.”. And I did get it.

Dear reader, I cannot possibly begin to put in words how hard I’ve always find it to find a starting point when it comes to narrating events of my life, so please, bear with me.

Have you ever heard about manifesting? It is getting quite big in our Western world the past few years. I thought I’d give it a try as well, nothing to lose after all, right?

Browsing through a second-hand bookstore in Lygon Street, Melbourne, my “to purchase” pile was getting bigger and bigger, including all kinds of spell and spiritual books, when my eye met a brand new, black leather notebook. The pages were still crisp and clear. So new that it even had the brand tag on it still, “Wishes shall come true”. Thinking I would eventually need a new notebook to write down my manifestations and keep my goals in one place, and the tag seemed very positive, hence I did not think twice about taking it to the cashier along with the pile of books.

“Did you find everything you were looking for?”, he asked.

I nodded and smiled while handing him the pile. He started putting everything in a bag, when suddenly, he stopped, looking perplexed.

“Is everything alright?”, I asked.

“Yeah, I just think you misplaced your notebook, this is not from our store.”

“Oh. I found it on a bookcase, it’s not mine actually.”

“Hm. Well, might be your lucky day, I cannot scan this, so you can have it for free!”.

I took it as a message from the universe, that it was meant to be, that this specific notebook, was hidden, waiting for me to pick it up.

To be honest, I left it sitting in my bookcase for a while. My life took a turn for the worst, and I was struggling with everyday life, when one day, I remembered the little black notebook, and the power of manifestation.

I opened it, and saw scribbles, random sentences along the pages. How could that be? It was brand new when I bought it, but then again, maybe I did not go through it properly.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and thought what I would write down first. The answer came within seconds.

“I will find true love. He will treat me right, with respect, and our feelings will be mutual."

I must have written that sentence down three or four times, and a week later, I did meet someone. He was everything I ever hoped for. Kind, handsome, respectful, and our feelings were indeed mutual.

However, my parent’s relationship started deteriorating not long after I stumbled upon my newfound love. They would argue every day, my father would cheat on my mother, until eventually, he left her.

A few months later, me and my partner decided to move in together, when I knew it was time to find that notebook again and manifest our dream home. And we got it, first try, first application, they accepted us over countless other people.

We must have been in our new house for about two weeks, still settling in, when we got a phone call. It was his brother.

“Uncle’s house got repossessed by the bank, apparently he missed a lot of payments. I don’t know what to do, but he’s technically homeless as of today.”

Could there be a curse that was following me? For every good thing I got, something bad had to happen. It was as if I did not deserve those blessings, or I had no right of calling them my own.

Two years went by, we got married, and we decided to start trying for a child. But the child would not come. All my friends seemed to be able to have children on the first try, but not me. Even my best friend was three months in, and she only got married half a year ago. There was nothing wrong with either of us, but my time was running out. I did not want to have children after forty.

Maybe it was time for the notebook to come out again, in secret.

It worked. After I wrote a few sentences down, a month later, I found out I was pregnant with twins. I was so preoccupied with planning everything for the baby, being excited that my children would get to grow up with my best friend’s child, like we did.

Until she had a miscarriage. She was inconsolable, and I would be too.

I felt so guilty yet had no way of possibly telling anyone about my thoughts, they’d either think I’m completely crazy, or they’d hate me as much as I hated myself if they somehow believed me.

I decided I was going to burn the notebook, after all, I had my family, what more could I possibly need?

I burned it in the fireplace, along with big logs of wood, so my husband would never find its remains in the ashes.

My children were born, two little boys, they were healthy and beautiful as the stars we named them after.

Everything was going quite well for the next few years, until we started losing money, not a lot, but a significant amount for me to notice. I could not fathom why, we did not owe any debts, we both had stable jobs. Me being me, I decided to go through my husband’s office, after all, how well do you all know your partners?

It was then I found out about his gambling issue. Thousands and thousands of dollars owed to loans from banks, as well as people I dare not name.

I was so ashamed of me; how could I ever not see what was going on? Was I such a bad wife that my own husband could not feel comfortable enough to confide in me?

The relationship I had with my parents did not allow me to possibly talk to them about it, they would blame me, mock me, and tell me to know my place as a woman, because men know better. The only person that could possibly understand me was my grandmother, but she was long dead.

I tried going to therapy, talking about it all, bit by bit, leaving out the whole notebook story. My therapist suggested that I visit my grandmothers grave and talk to her, as if she’s truly listening, try to get that weight off my chest without the fear of being judged. And I did. I must have spent at least two hours sobbing over her grave, trying to breathe and talk through the tears.

That night, she visited me in my dreams, and she was as beautiful as I remember her, with her long brown hair braided, her silk scarf around her head, stepping down from her Romani caravan, holding a little black notebook. She walked in my house and left it under my bed.

“Dear child, be careful not only what you wish for, but also HOW you wish it for.” She kissed my forehead and she left.

I woke up to find the black notebook under my bed, exactly where she left it in my dream. It was time to make everything right again, this time, without mistakes or greed.

Eventually, my parents got back together, my husbands uncle was blessed with a good job and was able to buy an apartment after all those years, and my best friend miraculously was with child again.

But our debts were still hanging over our heads. I was too scared to wish for money, too scared to ask of anything again. But I did. One last time.

I wished for relief, prosperity, and for the happiness we once had to come back into our lives, to be carefree again.

In my culture, we leave our dead to rest in the ground for years, until we open their graves again and put their bones in ornate boxes for the family to keep. We removed my grandmother’s bones a few days ago, and with her, we removed a big box full of gold that she was asked to be buried with, because the woman knew what would come.

My share of the gold was $20,000. More than enough to make a start in erasing our debts.

Dear reader, you might have wished for fiction. But does fiction ever come close to real life? All the tragedy, the rollercoaster, the tears, the loss the laughs, the love, is not for nothing. Life is handed to us as a gift, and each life, is like that notebook. Waiting patiently for us to find it. It is up to us to decide how to use that gift.