When the Ending is also a Beginning
My feet emit a hollow scrape on the worn hardwood floors. I can't bear to pick them up fully, not anymore. I've poured everything I have into this crumbling facade of a life I built over the last decade. All those years ago, I entered this city, brimming with potential, desperate to prove myself. And I did. I clawed, I begged, I bartered and stole my way up that metaphorical ladder, until I was perched here, at the top. Until... I looked down and realized I'd left nothing but smoldering regret in my wake. What was I thinking, all those years ago, when I threw away my dreams to become that which the world wanted me to be? When I settled down and settled into a job, a relationship, an existence, that would demand everything from me and give nothing in return?
I toss my keys on the counter and wave vaguely at my wife where she sits in her usual haunt, staring blankly from the couch at the television with the volume set unbearably high. She mumbles something, no doubt asking about work, but I don't bother to reply. She's not listening. She doesn't care. Her eyes are glued to the screen, upon which a man with puppy dog eyes is handing out roses to women clad in every hue of silk. Garbage. Utter garbage... and this is how she spends her days. This is what I go to that pretentious job at the tippy top of that gods-damned tower to provide for. I let my rage simmer for all of half a second before dismissing it. I sigh. I can't blame Renata for losing herself in that drivel on the television. It's what I'd do if I were her. Anything at all to distract herself from facing the fact that she's stuck in a loveless marriage... that she's stuck with me. I'm under no delusion about the fact that I am miserable to live with these days. I've been miserable to live with for at least eight years now; ever since I quit my dream- the reason I'd moved here in the first place. Yes, the day I traded in that fool’s hope of becoming a bestseller and put my bachelor's degree to good use in a cubicle at Harvey & Quinn Industries, was the day I turned into this miserable louse.
My shuffling feet bring me to the kitchen, where I brew an ill-advised cup of coffee. I counteract the caffeine with a generous slug of Baileys on top. Renata calls from the living room, “If you’re making Irish coffee, bring me one!” I pour a second cup and leave it in Renata's waiting grasp. Our fingers brush and she looks up at me with something like longing. I clear my throat and turn away, but not quickly enough to miss her face crumpling with disappointment. I am a rotten bastard, that’s certain. I know she just wants to be loved. I know she just wants me to ignore the clacking of keys, the whisper of paper, the acrid smell of ink for once. I know she’d like for me to sit beside her on the couch, to hold her in bed at night, to put in the merest ounce of effort. Ultimately, Renata wants something from me I simply cannot give her. I have but one passion in this life, and it is not her. So I continue on my way, settling in the one place in this god-forsaken flat that feels like home.
My writing desk faces the broad window overlooking the street. Renata wanted to put the couch here, but I refused. The moment we walked into the flat that handful of years ago, I knew this was the spot. I can see life below, a swarm of people carrying on with their day to day, existing as the main character in their own stories, blissfully unaware of the man perched several floors above. I like this window, because when I look down, I feel like more than the author of my own fate- I feel like the author of theirs. There, that woman with the burgundy scarf, black curls glistening with tiny droplets of rain, a package wrapped in brown paper tucked under her arm… She’s hunched to protect the paper from becoming soiled in the rain. But from up here, she might be a spy, delivering intel that will turn the tide of a war with mythical beasts torn from the pages of legend. A man is approaching her. He is tall and broad and from the looks of it, an insufferable gym rat. He stops dead in the center of the sidewalk and gives the black-haired woman an appreciative look, hands braced on his hips, unfazed by the rain. This man is confident to the point of pain. I’d hate this man if I ever really met him… but from up here, from my little window that transcends the bounds of this reality, that makes me into a god instead of a miserable excuse of a man…. From up here, that muscle-head in the street becomes a warrior, an escort for the woman… the beginning of a quest.
My fingers fly along the keys of my typewriter, misspelling words, adding spaces where they don’t belong, and skipping conjunctions altogether in the fervor of getting a new idea inked down. Renata sighs behind me, but I don’t care. I am lost to the words. I am a world away; just me, my grandfather’s hand-me-down typewriter, and the story of the spy with the burgundy scarf. My heart thunders in my chest, and I can taste the apricot the character is eating on the back of my tongue. I can feel soft hands brush along the biceps of her lover. I smell petrichor as she stands in a field on the outskirts of a village at the base of towering cliffs. I choke down fear as a lion stalks her from the cover of long grass. I revel in triumph as she turns to the beast and recognizes it as that stray kitten she saved from the gutter. I become her. I become the story. And when that happens, I feel…free. I am relieved of the burden of my pitiful excuse of a life. I type wildly, like a man who is burning alive, so starved to live the life that isn’t mine that I don’t hear Renata until she is standing beside me, until she places her hands atop mine and forces me to still. I glare up at her. She knows better. She knows better than to interrupt me when I’m in a flow.
“Ben, we have to talk,” she says, and I notice for the first time how quiet the flat has become. She has turned off the TV. The only sounds are those of her staccato breathing and the distant roar of tires on wet pavement below.
I hold her stare for a moment before trying to shake off her hands, “Fine. Just let me finish this page.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, Ben. God. This. This is why we need to TALK.” She lifts her hands off mine but doesn’t step away. She just wraps her arms around her middle as if she can hold some broken shards of herself together before continuing, “I’m done. I am so done with this. Ben, this is not a life.” She waves a hand in my direction, encompassing all of me in one swoop.
My ire roils and words fly off my tongue before I can stop them, “Newsflash, sweetheart– but this is a life. It’s our life. So I suggest you get used to it.” I sound like a villain. No. I am a villain. I grin up at Renata, “So, what do you want to do about it?”
She sucks down a gulp of air and steps away as if I’ve landed her a physical blow. Good. At least if we’re fighting we’re feeling something.
“No, Ben. Just no. I refuse for this to be my life for another second. You won’t even try to pretend you care about anything aside from that stupid typewriter.” She glares at the thing like it's sentient and then jabs a finger at it, “That’s your wife. And I’m not going to be. Not anymore. I want a divorce.” Her words hang in the air for a minute, heavy. Something rumbles in my chest at them. Something whispers in the back of my mind: failure. But the rumble isn’t pain. The rumble isn’t the tremor before a quake, set to break apart everything I’ve built. The rumble is an unleashing. Freedom. I laugh.
Renata bursts into tears. They flow as if freed from a dam, landing with audible plops on the wood floor. She backs into the wall and covers her face in her hands. I should get up. I should go to her. I should apologize for laughing in her face– even if she’s divorcing me, I shouldn’t end things like this. I shouldn’t actually behave like the insufferable ass I am. But. I can’t bring myself to rise. I can’t bring myself to care. Not when the story is waiting. Not when Renata is setting me free. So I just sit, hands hovering over the keys, desperate to continue, but not quite brazen enough to cover Renata’s sobs with the comforting sound of typing. An indeterminate amount of time passes before Renata’s weeping ebbs to soft snuffles. Only then do I rise, stepping around her like some piece of broken furniture. I go to the kitchen and pour two generous glasses of whiskey. I use the stupidly expensive cut crystal glasses she gave me on our seventh wedding anniversary. I feel nothing when I look at them– nothing but a small appreciation for the way they warp the light through the amber liquid. I know the whiskey is going to sit like curdled milk atop the coffee and Baileys in my stomach, but the fortification it’ll provide is more important than my comfort.
I stride for Renata on stilted legs, folding down onto the floor beside her, backs against the wall. I hand her a glass and she takes it with shaky fingers.
“Ren, I shouldn’t have laughed,” I speak glumly.
“You think?” Her voice is thick, but it seems she’s put her walls back up at least. She won’t let me see her cry again.
“Yes. I apologize.” She nods and I continue, “You’re right, Ren. Of course, you’re right. I’m not living out here… but I am living— in here.” I tap a finger on my temple.
“I know,” she whispers, “but I can’t live with you in there.”
“I know. I don’t want you to.” She sucks in a breath, but I still her with a hand on her cheek, “Ren, you need to live. You are right. You need to leave me. I can’t ever give you the life I promised.”
She just stares at me for a long minute, before a sad smile curves her lips, “I’m always right, Ben. You just seem to have forgotten.”
I raise my glass, “Well, then cheers– to you always being right.”
Renata clinks her glass with mine before slugging back the contents in one go and coughing. “What will we do now?” she muses.
“You’ll live.”
“And you?”
“I’ll write the story of how you do.”
Renata rises and pads to the kitchen, lugging the whiskey bottle back with her and dropping to the floor at my side once more. She refills our glasses, “Well then, let’s drink to that, Ben. Let’s drink to the end of our story.”
“To the end of our story– and to the beginning of another.”
We smash glasses again and drink.
I tuck Renata into bed two hours later. She promises to go pick up the paperwork tomorrow. In the silence of our flat, I breathe and breathe and breathe, and then I walk– not shuffle– to the typewriter in front of the window. I pull free the page about the woman with the burgundy scarf and roll a new sheet in its place.
And then, I begin:
Once upon a time,
There was a man who hated himself.
And there was a woman who dared to love him despite it.
I smile. Yes, life as I know it is over, but the ending is also a beginning.
Take Me Away
I crumple in my chair, staring blankly at the window pane and let out a deep breath that seemed like I’d been holding in for ages. There’s a feeling of defeat trying to overtake me. I have a sense for the need to get away, but I know right now this is impossible. My fingers run aimlessly over the keys on the old typewriter. I fling the window open and feel the warmth of the gentle breeze just on that edge between spring and summer. I can hear the noise of the cars in the distance and children laughing as they play. The smells of grass and flowers permeate the air and take me back to a time where there was much more hope and freedom in my life. It wasn’t because of lack of problems. It was because I knew where to go.
I begin tapping the keys and writing what I recall. I’m transported to the days I could disappear for hours, taking in the views of the reservoir and surrounding trails. The scent of pine fills my nostrils and happy processions of geese, proudly displaying their new goslings behind them, waddle out of my way. I can feel the sunshine on my face as I look around at the wonder of countless flowers popping up in obscure places along the rocky shores and banks of the water. Birds are flitting about the cattails and I hear the plops of turtles jumping off the fallen logs into the water as I pass by.
This is where I could let out all of the stress and uncertainties plaguing my mind and really tune in to the voice of my Beloved. I can hear His voice speaking sweet words of love over me. With each word another burden is lifted off my shoulders that they were never meant to bear. As I speed up my pace into a run all the hurt and anguish well up to overflowing tears, but when they hit the ground more weight falls off. Around every turn I take I feel lighter because I hear Him clearly say, “Accepted, cherished, wanted, chosen, treasure, protected, desired, provided for.“
I’m shaken out of this precious memory when I feel the wetness from my tears dripping down my face onto my hands. The warm breeze gently blows against my skin almost wiping the tears away. I can hear my Beloved whisper, “Come away with Me. I Am still here. I’ve never left you. You’ve just been too busy and taken on more burdens that you couldn’t hear me.”
More tears well up in my eyes and spill down my cheeks.
“Give them to Me again. Won’t you let me carry them for you?” He says. “The rest you seek, the escape you need, is just a breath away. My hands are open. My shoulders are big enough. My love for you is strong enough.”
I hold out my hands and release everything I’ve been carrying and once again I’m on that trail running through the dirt and gravel, but now the hurt and anguish are gone and I am free.
Resignation from the Absurdly Literary Position
Dear Dick,
I hope this letter finds you in a state of literary grace and grammatical correctness. It is with a heavy heart and a dictionary of synonyms that I tender my resignation from my position as Chief Wordsmith Extraordinaire, effective immediately.
Please understand that this decision was not reached lightly. It’s just that after spending countless hours crafting metaphors, similes, and puns, I’ve come to the conclusion that my true calling lies in the lucrative world of competitive Scrabble. I feel that my talents are better suited to arranging tiles on a board than rearranging words in a document.
I will fondly remember the days spent debating the Oxford comma, arguing over the pronunciation of “gif,” and trying to sneak “onomatopoeia” into every memo. However, my ambitions now lie beyond the confines of this office, where the only punctuation I’ll be worrying about is whether or not the triple word score was worth sacrificing all my vowels.
I assure you, this decision is not a reflection of the stimulating workplace environment or the copious amounts of coffee provided. It’s simply that I’ve grown tired of searching for the perfect synonym for “exhausted” and yearn for a challenge that involves more than just battling writer’s block.
I appreciate the opportunities for growth and creativity that this position has afforded me, and I will always cherish the memories of our team’s literary shenanigans. Please know that I leave with the utmost respect for you and the entire team, and I wish everyone continued success in all their future endeavors.
Thank you for your understanding, and may the pen forever be mightier than the sword (unless we’re playing Scrabble).
Yours literarily,
Mamba
Entry No. 167
January 16th. Entry No. 167
I'm the token woman on the marketing team. It is easy to spot us. There's one girl in accounting, one in sales, one in human resources, and there's the receptionist. We're stuck on teams of Roberts, Bills, Georges, and Christophers. Our opinions aren't as important as our image. I don't mean that we're all showstoppers, anyone who has seen Margaret knows she could benefit from a haircut and some foundation. I mean the heels, the blouses, and the lipstick. Don't companies look better when they've got women in all departments?
I thought so.
I applied for the position almost a year ago, now. I had a little portfolio of my designs, some experience in advertising, and a college degree. I beat a pink-haired lady, and the receptionist who wanted to work away from the front desk. But Leia has too pretty of a face, too feminine a body, to hide in a cubicle shoved in the corner.
The interview went well. The bosses laughed at my jokes. The girl from HR complimented my blazer. "Chic," she smiled. The guys agreed. They glanced through my portfolio. Bill liked the cards I made back when I studied abroad in Chile. The cards were invitations for el día de los niños, children's day, in the shelter I worked at. I liked the sentiment behind those designs, but they were easily the least impressive graphically. Nobody commented on the rest of my work.
Most of what I do is grunt work. Of course, I haven't even hit my ten-month mark. I'm not against paying my dues. I'll resize the images, recolor, write the email, contact the customer, sure. "Whatever you need, Bill," I smile. "Thanks," he winks. But it became clear that I may as well change my title from "Marketing and Design Specialist" to "Bill's Personal Assistant."
We hired Alexander a couple months later. He was nice, I supposed. But he'd been avoiding me for the last few weeks. Ever since I turned down his offer to take me on a date. It didn't matter that my current partner and I were speaking of marriage. It was too great an insult.
We have a weekly meeting every Tuesday where we discuss the status of the projects we're working on. I gave my typical bland report: I updated the graphic header for the interoffice communication, edited our monthly newsletter issue, and recolored the posters for the pop-art style we were doing.
Alexander, apparently, two months into the company was given lead design for the Xavier project. It was bigger than any project that I'd designed for. I couldn't believe it. Alexander wasn't bad, but his work was always so bland and sterile. There was no life to it, no flair. The Xavier project needed to be colorful with floral elements, and gold accents. Alexander's proposal had intricate blue and green lines intersecting to form different patterns on the posters, logos, and signs. They were a designer landscape, not some office supplies distributor.
Nobody asked what I thought, so I said unprompted, "it doesn't really say landscaping to me."
Bill looked at me sideways. "It's clean and simple, as landscaping ought to be."
I pulled up the photos of their projects they'd wanted us to incorporate. "Clean yes, but none of these are simple." I flipped through pretty koi ponds with pink lilies, palm trees and swimming pools, multi-level yards with tulips and irises, and stone walls with creeping thyme. "Xavier's Landscaping needs something that screams elegance, class, and—"
"We already sent this to Xavier for approval." Alexander cut in.
"I wasn't on the email list."
Bill let out his big signature guffaw, "he must have forgotten to add your email. Well, we all voted for it, and you know how democracy works."
Fancy way to say I didn't matter. I willed my face not to turn red and said, as cooly as I could muster, "just double check that you have all the recipients next time, Alexander."
I could see his scowl and anger bubbling beneath the surface. As if, how dare I correct him, how dare I ask to be a part of the team, how dare I insinuate that he may have made a mistake?
Bill has been hard to work with in his own way, but he deserves some credit. He gives me the easy and the boring projects, but he's nice. He's never chewed me out or needed me to ramp up my performance. My vacation requests were promptly approved, and he remembered to say happy birthday. I didn't mind having him as my supervisor. Robert and Chris don't interact with me much if at all. We speak when necessary and work together cordially.
I believed Alexander and I would have the same relationship. But he was charming at first. It was nice not to be ignored. After I declined to go on a date with him, he was silent. And now, he was cutting me out of the team as much as possible. The team was turning into a boys' club. Alexander was buying the boys beers. Robert was hosting a barbeque for the boys. Chris invited a couple of them to his bachelor parties.
For the first time, I'd been completely excluded from one of our jobs. And the Xavier Project, no less. The group I'd been collecting photos and information about. They didn't even let me proofread the brochure.
Bill was going to buy the team drinks. Alexander volunteered to drive them in his brand-new pickup. His stare meant I was clearly not invited.
The workday dragged on. The remaining six hours of the day felt like twelve. I texted Jason, down to grab some takeout and a box of wine? His response only made me feel worse, I have to work late, Muffin. I'll take you out for a real glass of wine this weekend. I don't know why, but I couldn't stop the tears. I pulled my scarf over my face to disguise them when I climbed on the bus.
I stopped at the store one block from my apartment and ordered the cheapest sub I could find and grabbed a ten-dollar bottle of wine. "It will be me and you, this evening," I whispered to the bottle of wine called Red Oaks. Tonight was certainly a night to dust off the typewriter and add another page to my journal. I only write when my frustration is boiling over.
I pulled the stack of papers out of the box and inserted a fresh sheet into the Typewriter.
"January 16th. Entry No. 167
I'm the token woman on the marketing team..."
Big body streams
Hard to find the words to describe how life's tribulations degradingly betray us. Fight rather than make peace. Speaking, rather than doing. Exclusive destruction feels good, construction of myself only does for a while.
Life goes backwards, forwards, right and center. Non-linear in the horrifically grotesque image of realism, not a potpourri smelling hippy at his 15th festival this year talking about time.
Staying in one place is too much for me to bear as I sweat beads of boredom. A few years makes the last six months a place of monotonous cocksuckery and melancholy suicidal ideation that brings me right back to the places and people and things which cause my beads to turn to stress and frustration and fear.
Currently I am obsessed with the concept of duality, because there is so much of it in my own life.
I have very little insight into other people's lives since my own is all consuming like a raging inferno at a Texas fraternity's bonfire.
I like my writing and I don't. Others like it, I wonder if they're lying to appease and placate. Adjectives? TOO MANY I suppose. Fuck you that is how I write you can throw this fucking book in the nearest garbage bin, and then jump on in.
Time spent appeasing people is time spent by the weak and miserable. I don't even know you. You're just dumb enough to buy my book. Be strong and miserable. Be dangerous and harmless. Be an asshole and a saint.
Be confident and vulnerably insecure to the point you leave yourself open to immense pain and suffering that permeates a majority of your memories and feelings towards on a daily basis until you are so fucking dead inside that you don't want to kill yourself anymore unless it would make you feel alive and not completely gone as your pride consumes you, what you once felt you can't even feel in your chest.
It's you.
Break the Covenant
A universe inflated like a balloon, still swelling, and our earth within, this impossible speck that by all math should not exist nor the lives in it, we.
Gifted a paradise where true currency is bound to every precious second ticking. It is a countdown.
And I and the countless souls in the city before me, break our minds and trade our souls for money, for a job we began training for as toddlers then a decade and a half of school minimum, so banks can lend us hundreds of thousands for houses with doubling interest, and we pray that all goes well and we can be free 30 years later, when we're old and the countdown nears the end.
And there's no choice. How can we stop?
Each tick tick tick worth more than any prior. Burnout is not mere exhaustion from hard work; it's a symptom of the poisoned soul. An acknowledgement that we spill about our greatest wealth like clumsy children holding cups once runneth over.
Marks for the confidence men, bled dry and thirsty and led across the desert, capable of turning back.
But no. Never.
We keep the path, crawling on glass and sand on bleeding knees and raw palms, our backs steadily whipped.
What a thought that all the universe that came before led to this. I think I'd rather make a go of it on my own. Better to fail and die a hungry death than work another day for someone else to get wealthy off my crippling labor.
Blow the mighty thousand trumpets! Sing you million choirs of angels! God let your voice thundershake the universe, so all, everywhere trembles. And I will belt out the message long lain hidden inside - I am of this earth and no man or woman born has any more right to be here than I. And I will quake the lands and shake the seas with the ferocity at which I ascend my throne, built not on money or power or the labor of others in my employ, but a throne made from my will and my time, and no one else's.
existential happy hour
I fell into the vacuum. I don’t care who is sitting alongside me at this faux wood table made to look like a redwood sliced mid-thought. It lay there dead, palms-up. Sad.
I eavesdrop on the conversation between an unlikely pair of men beside me. He, kids 4 and 8–wife stays at home. Him, dating two years—when she finishes graduate school, they’ll be together. Boring.
Across the room, not far enough away, a crowd of eight gather celebrating an engagement. They are hanging foil balloons and landfill paper signs: “She said “Yes!””
I, on the other hand, am gravely alone. Soothing an Amber because they don’t have anything darker this time of year. Checking and rechecking my pocket with the hole for my chip to a second.
The day grew morose early. Which made it long. And it is still going.
I am not lonely except during times when the thought that I should be encroaches upon me.
I will drive to the ocean this weekend. I focus on it. The future. The fact that there is one. Wishing my life away—
And in the meantime I stay busy. Busy with work and grossly interrupted sleep and, this bar.
There are at least 15 in the engagement party now. At least three generations. I try to look into their eyes to see when hope leaves. But several are familiar and the others are cutting cake so I give up and use my chip.
And just as I sit on the other side of the room, someone walks in and everyone else screams “Surprise!”
And I can’t get out of here fast enough.
Behind my typewriter
My fingers hover above the keys. There is nothing to say. It's all been said before. What was I thinking? What's the point of words if they're never new? Why say what's been said over and over before? I do not know what to write.
I could write about love. But my love is long gone. I am not made for love. I have tried time and time again but I cannot love. I am too cold, too distant. My heart cannot be one with another person's.
I could write about family. But I have never had one of those. No one wants to hear about a family torn apart by hatred and misery. The screaming, the shattered plates, the slammed doors are my burden.
I could write about life. But I don't have a life. Work has consumed me. I am just a machine, automated. I am nothing but a puppet and capitalism holds my strings, making me dance to its wicked song.
They say write what you know, but I know nothing. Today is another blank page. There is once more nothing to be said. I have lost myself and the words that my soul held.
To sit in silence is to face oneself. A break in conversation to hear what the other has to say. The other: your feet. The other: your organs. The other: the pain in your back whose cries are stifled by social anxieties each day when you leave the house. A locking door to an empty room, a place of silence. A place of overwhelming complaints, of longings, of terrible, horrible things. To sit in silence is to sit in chaos.
To sit in silence is to reflect into the mirror that is the undistracted heart. When the room floods, what is it that rises to the surface? What sinks? And which will you remember to move to a higher shelf? Do not fret though. The sunken and forgotten with age will become treasure that will be most novel to rediscover. By someone else of course, not you. The next tenant, hypothetical grandchildren, or a sparrow to use for their nest. To sit in silence is to scramble to the top of the trash heap.
To sit in silence is to gaze into the crystal ball you have spent your life creating. To revel and to mourn. To anticipate and predict. To worry and to dread. To sit in silence is to be assured that all is factual that is broadcasted from you and if the forecast is dire, you need to take shelter soon.
To sit in silence is to levitate in a spacious moment. At the counter between customers when the store is empty. On the near-empty bus late at night between stops. On a walk as the battery on your phone finally runs out. To sit in silence is not to sit at all.
To sit in silence is to squirm uncomfortably in your chair, in your clothes, in your skin. To sit in silence is to notice you are physically alone, and to realize the music, the podcasts, the radio are not your friends after all. To sit in silence is to notice silence. To sit in silence is to remember how untethered you are. Levitating, cartwheeling, sleeping, gliding, landing and launching. All you do to feel as though you are going somewhere, reaching something, reaching someone. To watch time pass and feel it pass to always arrive at the same place. To sit in silence is to face oneself.
Visibly Invisible
The world passes by as she sits by the coffee shop and stares through the window. She watches as a mother scolds her son to tie his shoelaces, she watches a young couple kiss and blush, and she watches as a homeless man sits by the pavement, hope long sucked out of his eyes.
Her heart blossoms with a strange feeling, a feeling of lingering longing. Longing for a time when her problems used to be taken care of by someone else, today her problems are her own. nobody is fighting her battles for her today. She curses herself for, ever wishing to grow up fast, to leave the safety of her mother's scarf behind. She wishes she could hide behind that scarf where all her worries would be drowned away by the warmth and love it holds. A single piece of cloth that could take her back to a time when the world used to be different and her biggest worry used to be 'What if my sister eats my ice cream.'
She sighs and looks into her coffee mug, the warmth it held long gone. It sits there cold and unwanted. These days she feels as if her life is a movie, the people are just characters passing by, and she has no control over anything. It had begun to feel like someone else was directing the movie that is her life. All semblance of control was lost to the director. Every night in her dreams she tries to see the person behind the directing chair but each night she gets closer to finding out, she wakes up.
She knows that thinking deeply will not take her anywhere, it never does, all it does is distract her from her pending work. The word work reminds her of all the files kept on her desk in her house that she needs to get back to. The never-ending pile of doom. No matter what she does, it is never enough. It doesn't get the work done, she doesn't sleep peacefully, another night that ends too soon and another morning that descends too fast another day where she has left people disappointed. Sometimes she wonders, is it only her that is so out of it and cannot handle the pressure? how is nobody complaining? She fails to realise that everybody is complaining they are just great actors at hiding it.
She thinks of what she is doing these days, waking up to do meaningless and endless work that puts food on her table at the end of the day. Is it worth doing such a job that you feel disassociated with? no zeal or passion for the subject, doing it just for the sake of doing it. She wishes she could escape the cycle and do something different. She feels deep envy for the people who have been able to achieve and do exactly what they dreamed of doing, those who are happy with their jobs.
She remembers a time when she had a passion and a younger version of her believed that she would be a writer in the future. Writing fiction novels for young adults. She mourns the time when she lost sight of her passion and the other things in her life became so important that it overshadowed her love for writing. She still has documents and WIP folders in her laptop, deep down, buried somewhere among the files of her work, never opened in many years.
No matter how hard life gets, one must never leave behind that which gives one peace. In the hardships of life, we forget that which has helped us through our worst times. Writing used to be her escape from reality, her bomb shelter when the world outside was burning to hell, but it got left behind in the tragedies of life. She made up her mind. She asked the waitress to heat her cold coffee and opened her notebook.
She began writing which hopefully would give her life a new beginning as well, she titled the chapter 'A New Beginning.'