Life

Dear Life,

I'm writing to ask, no to beg, you to stop. Just stop.

I've been tested enough and I feel like I'm getting ready to pop. I feel like you haven't been listening to me when I tell you I cannot take much more of your tests that you are trying to disguise as lessons.

I remember when I was in high school then college and then grad school you were great. But in 2019, you changed. In January 2019 you hit me with the first life's lesson of loss when you left Coal, the best-est boy. Later in June you a second lesson in loss left a dear friend, whose presence is still missed. In July, a third lesson of loss, I heard about the how you left another one of my friends, who should be in his own practice.

The beginning of November was great with you lesson in love when boyfriend became fiance, but then another lesson of loss when you left G-Dawg the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I still don't know the lesson behind watching my father wither and become a shell of the person he was before you finally ended his misery in 2020, right before you set the world on fire.

The end of 2021, we found there was nothing we could do to save the house and a separate lesson of loss in February 2022 when we walked out of those doors forever.

We've come to the present, and you're still swinging. Application after application. Denial after denial. Unable to get ahead anywhere due to the increasing costs of living but not the increase in my paycheck. Life, I'm tried of the lessons, and I want us to be good again. Can you at least tell me if there will ever be a light at the end of this tunnel?

Yours always,

Mela N. Cholia