The Last Failure

When I was a kid, my parents took me to the movies. That day became a memory for the family, because the main character was 30 and living with her parents, and for young me that was unthinkable. And I exclaimed, in the middle of the theater: "30 and still living with her parents?". The whole theater laughed. Those were simpler times, I think, as the sound of the television on the other room blares and my tea gets cold.

I am sure the God of Time is laughing at me somewhere.

Turns out, I turned 30 last month. Threw a huge party. I had almost everything - my own place, a job in the field I graduated at, a family that was proud of me. Life, if not good, was livable. Sometimes enjoyable, even. But the perfect facade broke when, in the week after my birthday, I got fired out of nowhere. Reductions in the company, they said. Not enough money to keep workers around. Funny how I was the only one who left before the end of the shift on that particular day.

No job meant no money. No money meant the bills piled up. And that, in turn, meant that the place I rented with so much effort - not only mine, but from my parents too - had to go. It wasn't a good feeling seeing my belongings put away, my whole life compartmentalized into boxes that no longer fit in my childhood bedroom.

My parents didn't complain about me moving back with them, of course they didn't. Not to my face, anyway. To me, they had a whole speech: "You're not some random chayote sprouting out of nowhere, girl. You're from us. We'll hold you up as long as we can." But I knew. I knew the looks from their friends behind our backs. I knew the heaviness of paying for one more mouth to feed, one more credit card, one more life. And, beyond all that, I knew how worried and disappointed they were in me. Because I was too.

And there I was. 30 and still living with my parents. No job to account for. No place to call my own. Living a life that brought shame to everyone around me, including myself. The room around me still had the unpacked boxes from when I moved back, my clothes still in my bags. Funny how the only place left in the end was the one I tried so hard to leave.

I took a sip of my tea and grimaced, the cold liquid hitting my tongue bitter as my disappointment. The TV was still blaring in the other room - dad, in his old age, doesn't hear as well as he used to. I sigh and get up, turning to close the door in an attempt to get some peace and quiet. I just didn't see a tiny little detail: a box in my way.

"Fuck!" I yell out as I fall, spilling not only my cold tea all over myself, but also the whole contents of the box that exploded open at my feet. "Ugh. Great. Just great."

I get up, trying to clean my only warm hoodie left, when my eyes fall on the spilled contents of the box. Loads of old notebooks are scattered across the floor, memories of a simpler time. I groan, picking them up.

"I oughta had thrown these away... I'm not in high school anymore." I say, piling a few of them to the side. Then, a paper slips out of the one I'm holding - an old drawing a friend made for me. It was of a teen girl holding a sword, her armor gleaming in the sun, with the gates to a city behind her. She had that look in her eyes, the youth look. The one full of spirit. Of hope.

She's Dalylah, the main character of an old story I wrote while in school. The embodiment of my teenage dreams for the future. A peasant, turned knight, turned hero. Everything I wished to be. Everything I was not.

See, Dalylah fought for her dreams. When things got hard, she refused to settle. When her village burned down, she enlisted as a knight. And when she thought she would die, she still went to fight anyway. I open that notebook, and read a few pages, cringing a bit.

I used to dream of publishing this. It was all I thought about. I was obsessed, really, about becoming an author, of living only for the written word. Barely paid attention to classes at all, and just... Wrote. I look at the notebooks piled beside me, and sit down on the floor. Each page I turn is filled with writings of deadly adventures, thrilling fights, heart-aching romance. And even more, each word held things that left me a long time ago: hope and the love for writing. At one point, these notebooks were my soul.

When did my soul break, I wonder.

I blink heavily a few times, and see the small tear drops slowly absorbed by the paper. Not even this one I was able to finish - I graduated before I managed to write the end, and was hit by the real world. My parents pressured me to go to college, so I could have a degree and get better job positions. College turned into a post-grad, and then another, and another. Writing became a second-place worry, and then third, fourth... Until it was buried under piles of bills, work management, adult life. A dream put on hold and buried in cardboard boxes.

I snort, trying to clean the tears of my face. Maybe that's the God of Destiny idea of a joke - since my dream was forgotten in a cardboard box, so was my life now. Slowly broken into pieces. Each one more painful than the last.
Just like my writing.

A ping from my phone gets me out of my thoughts, and I quickly grab it - I've been waiting for the results of a test I took for a new job. I open my email, and scroll through an ocean of rejection letters, automated answers and nothingness, trying to find if anything changed.

Then, right at the top, I find it: "Regarding the test for the F-15 position". My heart quickens, and I gulp, the last sliver of hope I have finding its way to the surface. This is it. The make or break. My last chance.

My last failure.

I let my phone fall to the carpeted ground, the lines thanking me for my time laughing at me like a big joke. I sigh, and not even tears come down anymore; what's the point? Just another failure I can add to my generous supply.

I rub my face, trying to feel something, anything. Anything is better than this nothingness, this... Empty space. But when I don't even feel the cold outside anymore, who's to say I'd feel anything at all. Not even pain. Just... Nothing, and a tiredness that feel all encompassing, all knowing. Suddenly, my bed looks really inviting - a place for me to hide under the covers and never get up again. A safe place.

I get up, groaning a bit. When you turn 30, you start to feel the aches and pains of aging. When you turn 30 with not a single prospect for your life, you start to welcome them. The internet jokes, but at this point, a meteor looked really promising. I get my empty tea cup from the floor, and walk silently to the kitchen, my face pale and my eyes sunken.

"You okay, kiddo?" My dad asks when he sees me. I just nod, not even bothering to answer. "Your mother is working late again today. There's leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry." He says, his voice fading as I get to the kitchen and wash my mug, before putting it away. I glance at my sleeping pills on the counter, and for the umpteenth time, my mind goes to dark places.

But I'm a failure even for that.

No courage left, I think, as I just drink a glass of water, still eying the pills. No drive, even for that. No faith.

I walk back to my room, not even registering if my father was speaking at me or not, and go through the motions of my nightly routine. And then, finally, I crash on bed, hiding myself under the covers.

"I give up." I mutter to myself, before falling asleep. "I won't warn anybody, but... I give up."

And I let my eyes close, sleep finally, blissfully, taking me out.