Another Wasted Day

It was slow, heavy and hot; one of those days where the hours seem to hang there as the minutes slowly drip of into the pool of another wasted day. She did not know what to do. There had been – once – a time in her life when she knew where she was going and what she would do once she’d got there. She’d had a life of possibilities and dreams. There had been a feeling that she would end up somewhere special, looking back on a life that had been full of chances taken and achievements made.

Now, she looked around the room, the breeze hardly shifting the hot heavy air of what once she would have seen as a summer of possibility. The wallpaper was old; yellowing and beginning to peel at the edges. The shelves were dusty and home to a mishmash of times she had just left there to gather a layer of dust of their own. The furniture was tired; defeated by the weight of the years it had stood, waiting for something to happen in this room.

She sighed and wondered if it was really worth it, really worth the effort - and the eventual disappointment – of trying to begin yet again. She remembered the story of Pandora’s box and that after all the bad things had fled the box, how the last thing left in there had been hope, and she wondered if that – hope – wasn’t the cruellest torment of all.