"Three Times the Universe Wanted
​to Yell at You" by Mary Woods '21

You know that feeling? That day? When everything goes wrong. When your parade gets rained on and you go from normal to blue to black very quickly. Yeah those days.
You hate those days, the days when it isn’t even your fault. Those are the days you want to yell at the universe, scream at it: why me, why today, why now?.
Except what you don’t realize is that there are times the universe wants to yell at you too. It isn’t exactly a one way road.
There are three specific things you do to annoy the universe; such a weird phrase, the idea that you, an ant, can irritate the universe. But anyway, there are three specific things you do: you pretend, you hang on and you hate.
The first thing: you pretend. You pretend that you don’t know, that everything is okay. As if by believing, you can postpone the inevitable. It knows that you can’t. By pretending, you can’t prepare, you can’t try, you simply react. That also annoys the universe. If you haven’t noticed yet, the universe gets side tracked very easily. Or maybe humans get side tracked and the universe gets dragged along with them. Anyway, back to pretending. The universe doesn’t have facades, unless you put facades on the universe. Then you add another veil, another lie.
The Second thing: you hang on. You don’t let go. Even when you know that it brings only pain and hurt, you hold on. You cling to hope even when it isn’t even physical enough to touch. You don’t let go of it until the chance, however slim, is pried from your hands. You hang on, as if you can slow down time, stop the universe in its tracks. The universe is a train going down a mountain, and you, you are not stronger than gravity.
The Third thing: you hate. You hate what you do not understand. You hate what you are afraid of. Really you just hate. For everything you have accomplished, all the mountains you climbed, all the towers you built, you still think that hating can help the world. Or maybe you don’t, maybe you know the truth and just continue. The universe can’t solve a logarithm, can’t write poetry, but it knows that hate doesn’t help, it only hurts. Why can’t you complex creatures understand that? The universe might just hate you for that. I might just hate that you continue on your dark paths and it has no choice but to follow, a dog on a leash.
So, when it’s one of those days, don’t yell at the universe. It isn’t its fault. You, with your dreams and your passions, pull it along. Everything happens to the universe. It never pulls strings or hits the dominoes. You do that. So don’t yell at the universe, because it’s probably yelling too.

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