So You Decide

And there you sit; the fear of the unknown on your hunched shoulders and eyes blurred by the numbness that is your all-encompassing feeling. You do your best to filter out the negative that isn’t worth the energy or brain space, yet these are the only things your head seems to care about. You think about your life and why you have ended up in that moment in the action movie where you’ve put up the fight, yet the city still seems to be crashing down all around you. Although you are in a chair at your desk with water, half eaten food, a candle slowly burning, and memories all around you, you’re not safe. You don’t feel safe. When you dream, you don’t wake up wishing you could just have 5 more minutes of the incredible movie in your head. Instead you wake filled with nostalgia; the empty dreams with meaningless plots if there ever were any, which brings you consistently to this moment.  It’s not that you’re simply just tired; it’s that you are tired of being tired. The drive you once had that kept you awake until the morning and through the following night seems to have faded with the glowing sunset of what is to come. Not tomorrow, not next week, but in the distant future is that land of energy, motivation, and sunshine. It is in this moment, like that of deciding on a college back in high school, that you have a choice…

So you decide to sleep off the tiredness in hopes that you will wake up a half an hour later, fresh. You wake up worse, now pondering the future and knowing that whatever you decide to do, it will eventually, somehow, be the wrong choice. You’re cut off from this thought-process by the clock. You take a shower, sitting down drowsily for a solid 10 minutes, woken up when the warm water turns frigid, and you quickly dry off. You get dressed in the same shirt you’ve had for years. You seem to have forgotten the last time you bought a new one, but it really doesn’t matter…

So you decide to come into work; that stale grey place with dim windows and dust—a physical representation of your thoughts and feelings. You want to get out—you’ve always wanted out. In fact, now that you think of it, you never wanted in. The love and passion for life you once had is untraceable now, like a submarine far below the surface or a pen in an unorganized backpack. You go through the day with your half-hearted smiles directed to your dry humored boss. You never really got along with him, nothing like you imagined it would be. By the end of the day when you’re in your chair with nothing to do, and fidgeting with your keys passes the time, here’s another chance to make a choice...

So you decide to take off from work a bit early to get away, at least for a little while. You know you have to come in earlier the next day but you probably won’t. As you continue to drive, you realize that you’ve unconsciously brought yourself here again. You go in anyways, but before you walk through the door to the dingy bar, you notice a bright sign with a cheerful family on a beach hanging above this place. You’ve never noticed it before. They have smiles, hold each other’s hands, and you swear you could see their genuine love for life and one another. They are content and full of joy, and it stops you. You start to wonder how they got there. What’s their secret? It’s as if your future dreams for yourself as a kid in high school are being lived by these other people in the picture, and it isn’t you. What you’ve been told your whole life seems meaningless, and it pulls at you, putting your life into anther short intermission. You want this more now than you have ever wanted anything in life. Dreams of travel, of family, of community, of joy and laughter, of kids and friends… It is for them. Not you.

So you decide. This is the climax of your story. You decide to not change. You decide to continue attending the same, stale tour of life with the old, white haired guide telling you what you can and cannot touch. You decide to live with regret, to stay where you are since it’s easier than trying, and to only dream of what life might be like if you had followed your heart.