Dark Matter

Dark matter exists between us.

According to Wikipedia, dark matter cannot be observed directly by the naked eye and does not emit or reflect enough radiation to detect through conventional equipment. Humans assume it exists because it has a gravitational effect on everything around it and, simply put, we cannot account for enough mass in the universe; this dark matter must be most of the stuff the universe is made of.

Dark matter is between us as well.

We sometimes tell the truth, omitting some information, and this becomes a lie of omission. We all do it; there’s no denying that.

But sometimes, someone reveals a truth, or we discover a truth, and the gravitational effect on our lives is amazing.

I’d like to think of this as the dark matter of our lives.

Every action, every word, hidden or not, has an effect on something or someone. We don’t know it all the time, but it does. Like dark matter, our lives are influenced by the great mass of unspoken words and unknown truths between us.

Wednesday was a long day. Jamie’s dean called up and said he’d been ditching school for the last two days, which, to be totally honest, was out of character for him. Even his dean admitted that.

I was very angry. Not that shaking-in-rage angry but that simmering pot angry, so, when he walked into my office, I confronted him with it.

But Jamie was adamant he didn’t ditch class. He had people in his classrooms who could vouch for him being there, and he even could explain what he had done in class.

Both Noel and I were satisfied with that explanation. Since Noel was teaching, he left to go back to class.

I’d picked up on something else the dean had said, so I asked Jamie about this as well. I’m not going to get into it because it is a very private matter for Jamie to tell people if and when he feels he would like to.

The dark matter pushed our lives in a different direction. This unspoken truth between us — up to that point, we hadn’t asked, he hadn’t told — was like that dark matter, that unseen but felt influence. Since day one, I felt there was this undercurrent of unknown truth, this dark matter streaming from Jamie.

And now I know the truth, the dark matter revealing itself to me.

But I ask myself: what further dark matter lies ahead? And, how much influence is it having, or will it have, on my life?