this cold, damp weather inspires dark thoughts...

The days slowly bled into months, months growing into years, years that should have at least softened the emotions, but instead worked to sharpen the feelings of dissatisfaction and sadness. The bitter pang of regret remained. A sharp underlying prickle which never quite left her. She had hoped it would go away at some point, and in some sense it did. Days filled with purposeful toil and mindless concerns blunted the edges somehow, quieting the voice inside her head. But sometimes, on cold, dreary days, when even the soul shivered as the body huddled, wrapped tightly in blankets, when her defenses succumbed to the torpor of the season, that sharp prickle would emerge, as though to say, remember me? I am every dream you ever gave up, I am every opportunity you did not seize, I am every potential you wasted, I am the life you should have been living. Was it worth it? Throwing your dreams and every one’s expectations away to live a life half-lived; marked by the flickering shadows of a computer screen; of endlessly stringing and sharpening words for others chasing the same dream or a semblance thereof, that you harbored all those years? Was it worth it? Worth breaking your promise to your mother and father, worth breaking both their hearts, worth desperately trying to make everyone understand that the dream had died far too soon and far too quickly for you to even begin contemplating to attempt to continue? And she thinks, it has to be, it has to be, otherwise the life she’s been living, the fragile house of cards she’s built, could topple down. Then the things she’s told herself, to convince herself everything was fine, would be exposed as a lie. This is the way she’s lived her life. And on cold, dark days, when she is confronted by her regrets, she prays for the sun to chase away the clouds, to shine on the dark corners of her mind and force these sharp honest thoughts back to where she thinks they belong, stuffed into forgotten corners and drowned once more in purposeful toil and mindless concerns.