Pandora

 

It hits you between the eyes when you are alone making the bed. You realize that the last few years you’ve been doing that degree, working dawn to dusk, browsing for potential master programs, all to please the others, of course you don’t mind.

 

You celebrate their happiness, their achievements, you celebrate when they congratulate you on your achievements. But do you really feel it in your heart?

 

Do they realize what you sacrificed to be this? the dreams quietly filed away in a drawer, secreted between the pages of a book now lying on that old dusty shelf. You doubt it, if you think of it you fall into the rabbit hole of broken dreams.

 

But if you could do it all again, would you do any different? would you not do that degree? would you go out with that aimless yet funny guy? No? why? Is it because you realized it would not matter, because there was no one worth doing it all for. Not even You are worth it.

 

Now you work fifty four hours a week, stare aimlessly at a screen at work and come home and eat dinner mechanically, check your messages and go to sleep. Then on Sunday, you come to that drawer, open it and see what you have given up, cry a bit, sift through the dreams, then close it again.

 

Then smile your secret smile, the sad one, not the one you show the world, the private one that you show yourself only. Your box is akin to Pandora’s, though all those bad things might have escaped into the world, hope still lies within, waiting to be called out. That hope keeps you going, that one day everything will be alright.

Its all alright, I guess Its all alright, I’ve got nothing left inside of my chest, but its all alright. ~ F.U.N.