Ambience

My room is slightly chilled. Like a bottle of well-prepared champagne, it’s ready for use. The strings of colored lights hanging around the room cast rays on the walls and ceiling that mix and mingle and blend like guests at an aristocratic costume party.

The music is soft and melancholy; yet with a hint of light somewhere on top like nutmeg dusting Christmas egg nog. Vanilla and cinnamon candles soften the air with delicate wisps of scent and warmth.

Somehow this symphony of ambience is hypnotic and involuntarily pushes me out of my life and into another one. It’s like a catapult that launches me out of this existence that I hate and into one that suits me better.

Sure, it helps that I’m tired and only half awake. Fatigue is a catalyst to help speed me on my journey away from the internal torment that defines me. Unconsciousness allows the intangible realm of dreams and imaginations to solidify and become real.

I find myself in a perfect place. There’s no such thing as worry or pain or anxiety. Happiness isn’t just some unattainable word on a billboard here; in this world that exists between my ears I can hold happiness in my hands. Friends are no longer few and far between, but we’re together almost like a family.

This is the place that holds all the things that “real life” never can. This is what “real life” would be like if it were perfect. This is the place that breaks my heart when I have to leave.

A knock at the door snaps me back like getting whiplash in a car accident. “Real life” has decided to rear its hideous face once again. Once again, I’m alone.

*
“You can spend your time alone
Redigesting past regrets
Or you can come to terms and realize
You’re the only one who cannot forgive yourself
It makes much more sense
To live in the present tense.”
*
Pearl Jam