I was once a dreamer—eyes gleaming with hope, veins flowing with fantasies. But this isn’t a story of colorful imaginations and reaching the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—it’s one of draining those bright hues from your system until what’s left of you is a shallow, robotic body.
Because I’ve hoped too much, and suffered from it even more.
I sit at my work cubicle again, working the night shift, listening to the loud clacks of keyboards around me—mushy, rapid, tired. I stare at the workspace in front of mm—I can’t even call it mine. It’s just an old desktop computer with disorganized and folded files scattered across the desk. I don’t feel bothered; this is just another ordinary day of plain mundanity. I barely feel anything at all.
Maybe I’m just tired. I think I’ve always been tired, but what else can excuse this feeling? I stifle a sigh, stand up from my swivel chair, and make my way to the workers’ pantry. Maybe a day’s work needs caffeine to combat the fatigue—
“Oh—” A pang of pain strikes my left shoulder. My eyes focus on the person in front of me. I almost take a step back at how ghost-like she looks. Deep and dark eyebags, eyes blank, pale as a dead body. She murmured an apology and walked away before I could even speak.
She was the first person I had an interaction with—if you could even call it that—today. Does everyone look like that? I scan the cubicles around me. The same monotonous colors reach my vision. Wanting to stray from the grays, my gaze reaches the windows of our building. The 50th floor we’re in almost reaches the high clouds, but the windows are tinted in a way so that we only look down, never up.
A thin, corpse-like reflection looks back at me from the window. The blood drains from my face. Who am I looking at? This isn’t me. The wrinkles on my face aren’t normal for my age, and I look like I haven’t eaten anything properly for weeks. I don’t look alive.
Who have I become? Why am I here? Why am I wearing this stained blazer and these unironed slacks? What am I doing this for?
I step closer to the window. We’re already so high that the skyline is filled with lights from other buildings. I try to look above the tinted part of the window, but I can barely see the dark sky. I angle my head to look down at the city lights again, but a different light shines in my peripheral vision. The shadow of a star. Oh. My lips part slightly as I realize:
The stars. I was supposed to see the stars. I was supposed to reach the 50th floor and witness the stars. How have I forgotten? In the course of age, my figment of a dream drained itself away. I reach out a hand and touch the cool window. The buildings are supposed to allow us to reach for the twinkling stardust. Not to put a ceiling over us, controlling the length of our reach.
The clouds are covering their shine now, but the stars are still glimmering behind. They never left. Only we did.
I turn around and face the isolating cubicles filled with the dull air of isolation. This isn’t me, no. It never has been.
I was a dreamer, and I thought that the colors, once turned black and white, would never be painted back. But black and white are all colors, mixed into one... So, maybe, in one last lingering breath of hope, the stars are just waiting for us.
And so, with this last urge for a daydream, I run towards the door.
