It’s 4:23 in the morning and I’m sipping my black coffee.

I’ve made mistakes and lost many, each time I untangle from it. I promise myself not to repeat. It’s a strange feeling, you know, feeling nothing one day and the next day the universe’s weight placed on my shoulder and my belly.

The man who I thought, doesn’t exist is now in flesh and in my life. His name is Richard. He is a mixture of my dreams and a sad reality with a hint of boyish charms. Somehow he spells danger, but at a certain point of my life, I’ve got to give in. It’s not like I haven’t welcomed chaos before, but I’m hoping and praying that this time it’s different. I’m scared. Is this how love actually feels like? Or is this yet another delusion impacting over my brain. Maybe I shut myself for so long that I have actually forgotten how to love or give love back to the people who love me. They say love is something you can share with someone if you can only first give it to yourself, and things related to that. But all I ever learned from love was, it makes you weak and breaks you when it breaks.

I remember those nights as a fifteen-year-old when a simple text or call would melt the heart straight away and I’d enter into a different spectrum, forming floods of smiles until it hurt my cheek. Why did I feel that way? Was it because I was weak or was I just prone to bad boys who would bathe you with words you desperately wanted to hear. Maybe I would give anything to go back to being a teenager, the high school dramas, and the heartbreaks, maybe I wouldn’t but it sure was a safe world where you know you have all the time in the world and no one could stop you from believing what you envisioned. Here I am ten years later, after battling life and demons, I think I’m STRONGER or at least that’s what my brain tells me. But life’s a circle in a way I hear, and I’m back to point one, ten steps back, and counting. Slipping away into deep thinking as I finish my coffee and it’s getting harder to breathe.

The sun is now starting to shine brightly, leaping from cracks to holes, dancing in the flowers and on my skin. I look down at the dogs making love and children running to catch the ride to school, angry drivers scuffing as the children grab seats. There’s beauty in everything, I agree, the simple things in life are the ones which we miss most when we last blink, but what a shame because all I see is, the dogs that will die of cold or hunger, the kids who would grow up to be thieves or get their hearts broken by some boy or a girl they fall for and the men who will hate themselves knowing that all they achieved in life was driving buses to school.

Nothing seems magical to me and I’m feeling this sharp pain in my chest or somewhere, which I can’t seem to locate. I don’t want to panic. I don’t know what the cause is. I’m getting dizzy; I feel the sweat starting to form on my forehead. I can’t care about the pain right now I have more important things to think about like Richard. I mean he isn’t the gem I dream of but then again, I’ve been told that in life sometimes you need to settle for normal, because the shiniest apple may not be the sweetest. I’ve got to question myself if I’m really going over everything I’ve been warned as a girl or that I’m simply addicted to drama and I just won’t quit.

I hear laughter and it’s my baby girl calling out for milk and cookies. Yes, I’m a proud mother of a six-year-old and just a fling to the man who left me for another. Adina is the best thing that ever happened to me. The mistakes I’ve made in the past are regrets and bitter memories but not her. She is my beautiful mistake with an angelic face and a heart of kindness.

I’ve been telling myself it’s going to be okay, I’m a woman enough to fight my way through this, that it’s just another chapter of life. Her innocent, starry eye breaks my heart and I’m petrified to give her a life she would hate. I don’t want to be a bad mother. I was a good girl once. “Good girls seldom make history”, someone said that to me once and it made me tear myself away from who I really was. I wanted to be known. I wanted to make history.

‘Boys and drunken escapades’. I did not make history. What a shame.

I think about life and how I’ve come so far without any instructions and rules and I’m happy that I’ve finally found the man who would stand by me and Adina. Even if it may not be love, I’m a mother now and priorities come first. Suddenly the pain is sharp and acute. I rush into the facility room, I look down, I’m BLEEDING, I lost another soul.

Dialing his mobile number, “It’s out of service.”

Universe: nine—- Me: zero