Life on the singular track-track being all work and no play

She woke up at night breathing hard. Trying not to come awake but even as made the last ditch effort to remain in the world of dreams she knew it was going to be no use. It was going to be one of those nights.

She got out of bed and made her way to the quiet balcony, the dead of the night broken only by the sounds of the grounds of dogs mating happily beneath her window like they did most nights. For a moments she stood there, transfixed, wondering her behavior would classify as perversion…she turned away, she who had gone by the norms of society and family forever, too tired and tied by habit, feeling too guilty of standing at the balcony because she knew her eyes would be drawn to the animals again.

She came back to her room, lit a fag and sat staring into nothingness. The events of the day wouldn’t leave her mind. Today…well it was yesterday now!!! Gosh another year older…hardly seemed likely that she was almost 24 now…TWENTY FOUR!!!

“Fuck man!!! I am old”, she said aloud mumbling to herself. She was a more or less ok professionally twenty four year old. She earned enough to keep herself in relative comfort. She was smart, visibly successful and cute even if she did say so herself. And yet…there was this gnawing emptiness, this god awful vacuum that no amount of work, partying, men or even family was being able to fill. Most of her school friends had married by now…some even had kids and yet she did not find in any of them the kind of fulfillment she knew in her heart she needed.

She hadn’t given in to the pressures of family gotten married. She remained convinced that she would get married not because it was ‘time’ but because one day she would fall so completely irrevocably in love with a person that she would feel the urge to be his forever. Till then she was quite happy to play the game of satisfaction and joy with men that suited her liking.

She knew the feeling she was looking for was the one she had when she was in college…her first love…it had been five years. And yet, she could remember his voice more clearly than she could remember the face of the last guy she had been with. She could feel his breath on her mouth the first time he had kissed her, the way she felt loved, cherished, worshipped in his arms, he loved her when she wasn’t even sure who she had been…a scared kid, eighteen years old and he had loved her and she him.

“Damn it” the cigarette finished and she realized she needed another one…how easily smoking became a habit…a crutch that she leaned on when she was stressed. Heaving a big sigh she told herself that she wouldn’t start feeling sorry for herself. She was a better person than that and yet…the feeling that there was something wrong wouldn’t go away. “Maybe I’m just missing a relationship…or maybe I do need to get married and settle down” she mused aloud.

Shaking herself out of her ministrations, she got up and went to the fridge, wondering about the dream. It had been coming back with some regularity these days. She was an intelligent girl; she knew that dream which woke her up and kept her awake wasn’t good news. She has psychoanalyzed herself a million times and was yet to reach a conclusion.

“I’m just getting too old man”, thus consoling herself, she went to bed, ready for yet another session of tossed and turning kinda sleep.