A Room Full of Forgotten Dreams

The room feels warm, familiar lit like candlelight, holding a forgotten youth that never was. That never was meant to be.

A forgotten teddybear rest in the corner forgotten, dust on it once soft fur that was once shone so bright. It's bowtie now hanging by a single treath, had seen it's better days.

Present, like it's quitely withnessing a life unlived.

Its once bright black eyes now faded out hard edges softened by time itself.

When you take another step to observe and look further around you, you get that familiar feeling, it hums inside you.

Memories of what could have been, flowing back, some more remembered and, thought over, again and, again and, you asked yourself that too familiar question: How much influence could I have had? It's a silent regret, mourning the memory of lost change.

Outside the room, a familiar voice sound, first soft then, building up, till it calls out shouting in it's anger, absence of the figure that's used to call itself parent. Spoken in only name and, title.

Inside the room, it's so silent what hums around it's not the disturbance of quite, something else that disturbs the broken scene, to clean to, neat never making you feel never truly at ease. The room it's only sound of silent absence. As if waiting, for the storm to unleash.

A picture you spot, it hangs on the wall of what could've been, a picture so simple, other people smiling the perfect happy family and, you wonder to yourself why was that not me? They smile to you, frozen on that paper forever captured in time. Almost as if where to mocking you. A happy life everyone seems around you always seem to have and you, keep on wondering why not me? Was I just born unlucky? Did I lack? Could things have changed if I worked just a little harder.

Reflecting that feeling, that killed and, dulled you inside as that familiar feeling of loneliness pools inside you once more. Thinking back of all the time you needed them but, where let down, where disapointed, neglected. You where never in the light and, felt more drawn between the shadow. Now your just between.

The warmth of the room comforts you, but, the feeling like that's all temporary never leaves. Then the smell of old wood hit's you, a hint of something sweet, candle wax our fading flowers you can't quite make it out.

Grief presses softly against your chest. It's the familiar ache of a youth missed, parents present but emotionally absent.

Using you as a scapegoat, a target to vent of their emotions.

You weren't their child, you where their therapist, their target, their personal reflection of all the things they failed in life. Child just another title, only in name.

The small echoes of what could have been remains everywhere around you: The toy, the silent walls, the empty chair where someone should have sat beside you. Should have sat, when you where there, perhaps when you had, a graduation, a soccer match, a play...

Each detail around you feels familiar, almost universal, the cup never drunk, the shoes never worn, the birthday gift never gotten all of the unclaimed moments left behind.

Understanding settles at the edge of your thoughts. As a memory drifts, faint but insistent, asking you to see the life that was, the life that could have been.

And you carry it out with you, you always will, for as long as you live, and maybe through the thought in others beyond.

This silent one quiet question remaining always:

What is remembered when so much is forgotten? What is still, unbroken in a land, of broken things?