It Was All A Dream

Last night, as shadows cast by dim street lights trickled into my room, I cried. Silent sobs echoed in the hollow recesses of my chest. With my palms pressed together and head bent low, I whispered an earnest plea to the universe, to God, hoping that He might lend me the strength to close my eyes and find an escape from the persistent thoughts that had haunted me. Every time I closed my eyes, a whirlwind of memories unfurled. My marriage – to a woman who had been my anchor, my confidante, the one I adored with every fiber of my being – had withered away. The love which was once an overflowing river had now dried to a mere trickle. That night, as I stared at my daughter, her soft cherubic face lost in the world of dreams, my heart ached. The weight of knowing that it would be a fortnight before I could see her sleeping again was crushing. The cold truth of my new life was sinking in, piercing deeper with every passing day. The emptiness left by the void was chilling, pulling me into an abyss. I questioned myself, where do you even begin to rebuild when the ground beneath you has been so violently shaken? The torments of the night took form in my dreams. I found myself in a boat, with the vastness of the ocean surrounding us. My wife sat across from me, her eyes distant yet piercing, as she solemnly counted down time on a silver watch that glittered in the moonlight. The tick-tock seemed to mock me, a cruel reminder that our moments were numbered. My heart clenched in anguish, realizing that the life I’d dreamt of, where we grew old together, might have been nothing more than an illusion. Every morning, I forced myself to rise, trying to stitch together the pieces of my life. Moving forward, despite the bleakness, was my only solace. The pain, the gnawing feeling of regret was omnipresent. Yet, within that pain was a desperate hope – that someone, somewhere, might learn from my mistakes. The bottle, that cursed container of liquid oblivion, had been my downfall. My refuge, until it became my ruin. The allure of its amber contents had dulled my senses, pulled me away from the ones I loved, until I had lost the very core of my life. To anyone reading this, know that some mistakes are irreversible. Put the bottle down now, before it’s too late, before you too are haunted by the ghosts of what could have been.