Shards

Twinkling little pieces of glass.

Twinkling little pieces of broken glass.

Twinkling little pieces of broken glass with jagged, sharp edges that lay there, mocking him, reminding him of all that could have been and all that was not now.

There was a saying in his community that when God gives, He gives in heaps. Someone should have also framed the saying that when He took things away, He took away every bloody thing.

He looked back at the broken glass pieces that lay in front of him.
Twinkling damn things. He thought angrily. Each bloody one reflected the light from the single candle next to them and sitting there in the darkness, reminded him of one painful memory each.

He willed himself to blank out his mind, somehow trying not to take in the enormity of everything together. One by one. He breathed deeply. One by one. Deal with them one by one and you can master them all. After a few minutes of struggle, his mind did stop thinking, and for a few minutes he enjoyed the silence in his head. Maybe he did have the situation under control. Maybe his emotions were not as raw as he had thought.

Then he felt the sticky wetness on his cheeks, and he buried his face in his arms. This was crazy. How had everything come unravelled so quickly? One moment he had been the successful go-getter with the moon and the stars within his grasp - on the brink of a fantastic career, with the love of his life, a bunch of supportive friends with the "right connections" and the surety that nothing would go wrong.

And now nothing was right. His career hadn't taken off, his love life had sunk into the gutter and he was sitting alone in darkness with his only support being a lit candle.

Which looked like it may go out any minute too.

The worst part was that he didn't know how it had gone so wrong. He had been fired before he had joined, the HR manager citing "recessionary times" as the reason; his relationship with his girlfriend of more than two years had sort of dissolved... in the absolute sense. It had disintegrated at every point and shattered into a zillion different pieces that he could not even begin to piece back.

And he didn't have the strength to deal with any of it. He wondered if the hurt would go away if he just gave up on life and spent days together in the darkness, till he felt he could deal with life. He lay down on the cold, hard flooring of his "super deluxe" flat (as the broker had put it) for which he could no longer pay the rent, and curled himself into a foetal position. He could almost feel his body shutting down, organ by organ. He closed his eyes. The last image he saw was that of the shards of glass twinkling as the candle blew out.

Tomorrow. He thought.Tomorrow everything would be okay. Till then, he was going to give up.