Forever January

“It’s the bitterness,” I said quietly, grasping my cup of tea between my hands. “It’s like a black hole in my heart. It devours, destroys. It kills. And who could ever fathom escaping a black hole? Once it’s there, isn’t it there forever? Sucking and devouring, turning everything pulled towards that gaping maw into nothingness …

You’ve always purported turning Life’s lemons into lemonade was simple, but I’ll tell you this: you can’t turn lemons into lemonade if you never have sugar. Sugar is the key to all this. And Splenda, Equal, these things never suffice. It’s like putting a band-aid over a gushing aorta — you’re still going to bleed to death. The lemons will still be lemons.”

I sighed and looked up at the crescent moon hanging low in the sky, the stars glittering around it like lost diamonds in the night. “I feel as though I’m caught in a vicious cycle, you know? There’s no end in sight, no relief on the horizon. I want to be done. I want to be finished. I’m tired of swimming against the currents. Why not just let them win? Let them take me off into the dark oblivion? I hear the abyss is quiet … And maybe –maybe — there’s no bitterness there to plague my heart …”