nerdgasm55:As it vanished I sat up slowly… “Hey what the fuck.” slipped softly from my lips.A moment
nerdgasm55:As it vanished I sat up slowly… “Hey what the fuck.” slipped softly from my lips.A moment passed. “No. What the actual fuck? What was that?” I glanced around the room as if the walls would answer me. The beige chipped paint had nothing to say to me. I stood up.I paced. I wondered what it meant. I wondered if I was crazy. I mean, things like this don’t happen. No one lives in some Christmas Story, Hallmark Channel movie bullshit reality. No one magically gets shown what their life could have been.But that hadn’t happened, had it? I wasn’t shown what could have been. Someone else was shown me. Like, I was in some kind of horror fantasy version of my life. “What the hell?!” I muttered to myself again.I mean, so what I still had roommates. SO WHAT I just got laid off. Ok, so it was 6 months ago, but I would get another job sometime. SO WHAT I hadn’t paid rent and my friends were starting to resent me. I would pay them back. SO WHAT I hadn’t showered today… yesterday… 2 days ago?I stopped to consider it. Wait, no, don’t get distracted. Some motherfuckers just popped up in my room. I had bigger problems.“I’m doing fine. Just fine!” I said aloud. It didn’t echo. I supposed there were too many clothes on the floor for it to have done so. It did the opposite. The thick air of my room seemed to stifle the sound, mocking me. The murmur of my TV went unnoticed. I’m not fine. The thought imposed itself on me, almost as if I didn’t think of it myself. As if the abject truth of it refused to go unacknowledged.I sat down on the edge of my bed. Realizing just how bad I was really doing weighed me down. My back bowed under it. I gripped my head in my hands and looked at the floor. An orange peel was under my left foot. I noticed my TV was still playing. I blindly grabbed the remote and clicked it off.I am not fine. I am someone’s nightmare. NO, I am my own nightmare. If that was me? If I’m not delusional? I’ve gotta be delusional.“No.” It comes out hard. “No.” Again.I stood up and walked to the mirror. I took a good long look. I met my own eyes and saw something there; something I hadn’t seen in a long time. If I could do better in some fairy tale land… I would do better. Now. Today. I took a shower._____________________________Forty-four applications later, I got an interview. (If I had had to fill out one more online form only to attach my resume at the end I was going to scream, so I guess it was fate that got me a callback.)It was hard work that kept me in that job for 2 years. It was taxing. I wanted to quit more times than one. When my alarm rang at 6 am every morning I wanted to snooze it and just get one morning to lay in bed.It was being there everyday that helped me make connections. It was doing my job that got me that job offer for my friend’s start-up. It was me who pulled myself up. I had almost everything I could have dreamed of then, and I would work until I did. When I think back to where I was 5 years ago. Jobless, loveless, hopeless… I don’t need to look back. I know how far I’ve come. ______________________________It was time for me to go home. I’d finished my work for the day. I could have done a little more on the McKinnon project, but it would keep for tomorrow. I shut down my computer. As I hit the button for the elevator, the lights flickered slightly. Maybe we should get the wires checked? I mused.The elevator doors opened and the person in the elevator was something I never thought I would see. It was an apparition. A hazy black shape that I’d had on my mind everyday for the past five years. A shape I could never forget, but thought I only dreamed.It reached its arm out to me and took a hold of my jacket. “Are you ready?” it said. I got the feeling it was laughing.Everything blurred and all I had to focus on was where it touched my arm. An arm wearing the suit jacket of a successful professional. The world stopped moving but time seemed to stand still. I looked around. It was my old room. I glanced down and there was the orange peel I remembered, right at the foot of the bed. The TV was blaring the show I used to binge. I turned to the bed and knew what I would see. It was me. Mouth slightly agape. I turned in shock to the apparition as it squeezed my arm.“-and THIS is what you would be!” came a deep shout.And I knew. I knew exactly what to say. What I needed to say. The only thing that would change my life.It came out of me as if I’d rehearsed it, which I had a thousand times in my mind, “Oh my god! Spare me these twisted visions, specter! I’ve learned my lesson!”The world blurred again and I blinked. The elevator door opened to the lobby. I felt myself grin broadly enough to hurt my face. -- source link