Sunrise

“Don’t cry”, he’d said. He had looked at me with sadness and worry. I had tried to hold back the tears which were impatient to run down my cheeks. The more I tried to stop them, the more the knot in my throat was choking me. I couldn’t breathe and I broke into short sobs that turned into a relentless cry.

My world was falling apart. A few months earlier I had lost my job. Last week —when those had been the last words he’d said to me before leaving me, without any other explanation than that he had stopped loving me— I lost my heart.

I felt helpless and knocked down. I had thought a lot about my life in the last few weeks. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue the career I had spent so many years studying for. Everything felt so futile and inconsequential. ‘What’s the point?’ I had asked myself over and over, without seeming to find an answer to such a simple question. I had been sleeping long hours, not wanting to get out of bed, not strong enough to care, or eat, or even check my emails or calls. I had been screening everything: from calls to text messages. I hadn’t picked up my mail in over a week. It just all seemed so pointless. I had tried for so long to do something with my life, to be something, to achieve goals, and take care of myself. But I was tired. It felt like I was forever swimming against the current and I just couldn’t push anymore. I was exhausted.

Now, lying down on my couch looking through the windows from my apartment’s balcony, I could see a sleeping city with its buildings dressed in constant lights wrapped around a dark firmament.

The pillow where my head was resting was wet from crying. There was a small container out of focus —since my attention was set on the city—, it had fallen over, with white pills scattered all over the table. Some of them were on my hand.

I felt suffocated by an emptiness that kept swallowing me. It wouldn’t let me go, and when I managed to get up to the surface and feel the breeze of hope in my face, it would pull me down again with its long and viscous fingers to drag me back to misery.

I focused my attention on the pills. The container read Zolpidem. I had gotten a prescription from the doctor not long after I had lost my job and started suffering from insomnia. My situation had not improved after a few interviews that were getting me nowhere. I observed the white pills on my hand… tears kept falling. I couldn’t stop them. They were furious and they hastened to escape.

I extended my arm on the couch, resting my head on it. I was not sure about my decision; although I felt that that was the only way out. Without a job, I wouldn’t be able to stay in my apartment. I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. I felt lonely and abandoned. I was certain nobody would really miss me.

I was musing over those thoughts when I felt the weight of sleep overpower me, making me its prisoner. My eyes began to close slowly, the weight of the eyelids forcing the process.

When I woke up, the sky had roused. An explosion of pastel colors had dressed the sky with many hues. An orgy of pinks, purples, blues, and a tinge of yellow and orange were decorating the horizon. Dawn had shown up when I most needed it —to remind me that a new day had been born and, with it, a renewed sense of hope.

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