How does it feel to give up on something that drove you every second?

Something that gave you purpose to fight all these years.
Something that consumed your time, energy, and sleep.
Something into which you have put all your soul.

You have come too far. You always thought that giving up was never an option. But now you have reached the end.

“The Dead End”

You have reached the end of dreams and stranded in the middle of nowhere. The road of dreams has ended abruptly. Your mind is now liberated from the fickle thoughts. No more switching over between “Never give up” and “It’s okay to give up”. You take time to give in and accept this dead end.

You see the sky getting dark. This time, the night closes in permanently.

You see the monsters peeping out from the bushes.
Grinning…Howling…
Waiting to devour you.

You look into their glowing eyes and see them having a sense of relief. They no longer have a warrior to fight with. They are waiting to celebrate your failure and tell you that some dreams are always meant to be dreams. 

You are about to witness the most painful thing where your dreams die while you are still alive, while you are still fighting. That feel of powerlessness at the merciless hands of monsters. 

You have put up a great fight all these years. Fighting them all along the road of dreams. And now you realize there is no route anymore. You stare at the dead end. The dead end sympathizes with you. It curses itself for not providing a path.

You have nothing left in you to fight. And you have no reason to fight for. Gone are the days when you fought till the dusk and survived to fight the same battle the next day. Now that there is no road, what would you fight for? You have completely lost the purpose.

As time goes, darkness surrounds you. The monsters close in. They get ready to knock off your guts one by one. Till the point when you succumb and become a hopeless soul. 

You laugh at them and take out your sword for one last time. You know the monsters might overwhelm you and defeat. But they can never take away your fighting spirit.

That belongs to your soul.

– Pradeep

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At some point in life, you enter a death spiral and end up in a gray world. The Gory, Gray world, filled with broken dreams, shattered hopes, and lost faith. You didn’t choose it. You know this world existed. You just denied to acknowledge it’s existence. But in the end, you were forced to accept it’s existence.

No more sharp difference between white and black. Everything seems to be painted gray. You can no longer tell the difference between a dream and a reality. A dream feels as real as a reality and the reality just feels like a bad dream.

You feel numb in reality and experience pain in dreams. You can’t differentiate a dream and a reality using pain or senses. Your senses don’t help in differentiating them anymore. Neither your feelings. You don’t know if you are alive or dead. Much similar to Cotard’s delusion. You doubt your own existence.

You wonder, how did I end up here?

It all started with the dreams. The ones built by your thoughts. Built meticulously,
One by One,
Day by Day,
For Years.

Concealed in the deepest place of your mind for years. You were astonished by what you built over the years. Only to see it fade away and get lost in the dawn of reality.

You know its happening. But you don’t want it to be happening. You have had nightmares. Similar nightmares. The nightmare of losing your dreams in the wake of reality. It feels strange when your nightmares come true. You have had nightmares in dreams. But never in reality. The moment you get to experience them for real, becomes the moment you lose your sanity to distinguish a dream and a reality.

After all this, a small portion of you in that deepest place of your mind that helped building the dream, still hopes for an alternative reality.

You start wondering. You wish you were only dreaming.

But you weren’t. You just lost the ability to differentiate them.

– Pradeep

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