A Lifesaver - Short Story
She was lying restlessly in her bed. The clock was showing half past midnight and she knew she would be knackered next morning but she couldn’t fall asleep.
The feeling of sadness and unhappiness was quite overwhelming. And there was nothing that she could do to make the positive shift in her mind.
It was quite ironic as she used to be a person that enjoyed life immensely. She used to think that the life was too precious and too short to feel depressed. She couldn’t understand people wasting their lives on moaning or regretting things they had done instead of following their dreams.
It never crossed her mind back then to ask ‘what if there are no dreams to follow. How does it feel when there is nothing to look forward, when the life seems to be totally pointless?’
She knew it now.
She knew what was like to have nothing to look forward, no life expectations, no dreams. There was nothing in the unknown future she would like to live for. Well, not entirely true, there were things that she wouldn’t mind seeing like her niece growing up but this wasn’t strong enough to give her a purpose. Not enough to give her a meaning and a hope.
No, she had no hope that anything would ever change for the better, that she would ever feel happy again. Each day was the same as the one before and the only thing that kept her going was the feeling of responsibility – the internal voice saying that she must go to work, that she must eat and must sleep.
She used to be a person full of joy and dreams. She kept planning for a bright future when they were together. She had stored safely in her head all the tiny beautiful details of all those things she wanted for both of them, someday. There was a picturesque house full of a laughter and warm feelings where they were supposed to live one day. There were trips to foreign lands they wanted to visit, things they wanted to do. Plans for their careers and a sweet retirement afterwards. All was there once but when the love was gone, he was gone along with all their dreams.
He was part of all of them, all of those wonderful plans and the things to look forward. Without him this future had no sense at all. It broke down into million pieces and was buried along with other memories of the past. She was left with nothing.
She was trying to fall asleep but she couldn’t. Months had passed already, so she should have recovered by now. He wasn’t a problem as she knew she didn’t love him anymore. The problem was that along with love for him, love for life left her as well.
She didn’t know how to live anymore, she forgot how to dream. Her life became vegetation and such a struggle, that she could only take it a day at a time. She didn’t dare to think about next month or next year as the thought of suffering like that for longer than a week was unbearable. Yet she had to find strength to do it, one day after another.
She needed to fall asleep; she needed to do it now. She needed something that would engage her mind and stop her from thinking about the indifference she felt about her own life. With a big struggle something came to her. A hint of a thought at first, only a shade of her very own personal dream.
Yes, she found a dream to focus her thoughts on. It was a dream that never came true even though she did everything possible to make it happen. She wanted to be slim. Yes, silly, she just wanted to lose this excessive weight. She dreamed about it for years, went through countless diets and exercise programs. She developed many food allergies in the process and some muscles under the fat, yet she had never achieved what she wanted.
In fact the more she tried, the worse her self-esteem was impacted as after each trial she was weighting more than before. His comments about her look and weight were not helping either. She really wanted to look great for him but he never noticed the efforts. Or maybe he just thought that pointing out she was weighting too much was good for her but it did hurt so badly. It was her curse for years, the unreachable dream.
The funny thing was that after she left him, she lost quite a lot of weight without much effort. It felt like the weight off her shoulders was real as it took away several pounds of her body weight. She felt better about herself now but she still wouldn’t mind losing more pounds.
Yes, that was a good thing to dream about, so easy and comfortable now. Her old enemy was her biggest friend in this strange dreamless world. She did hold onto it and soon has fallen asleep. She finally had something to keep her afloat, till that day in the future when the sun would come out again.
