The Hall
Where am I?
Is this where all forgotten writers end up?
I’ve been lost for so long I now lack the confidence to raise my hand during the lecture. I keep turning my back, seeking familiar faces among the crowd, hoping one of them will remember the place where I belong, yet their expressions are a vague reflection of what they used to be. Conformity is talent killer, and it can be as addictive as popcorn at the theaters while you’re watching a shitty horror film on a Sunday night. I guess life is just a big excuse to decide how we are going to kill our souls. Whether by choosing exhilarating bad decisions, unrecognized good deeds, or an entangling love story, the novel always follows the main character through thick and thin. And then, there is the rest of us that end up in here — in a place without mirrors, without remembrance, without purpose, and most of all, without ambition.
Have I been here before?
Why do colors lack their vibrance and glimmer?
I close my eyes, hoping to wake up from this purgatory of self-pity and unjustified sorrow I have created for myself, but they can’t all be victories. You don’t believe me? Just ask Nicholas Sparks — his picture is up on the wall of fame. It was foolish of me to aspire a life filled with stories to tell because superpowers do not come with responsibility — they come with a price, and payment is done upfront, without guarantees and without insurance. And if social media has taught us anything, is to sign contracts without reading them.
What a great twist for the main character to discover that his own decisions are dictated by someone else.
Am I here by choice?
Why is silence associated with loss and sadness?
I would never admit this out loud, but this whole place seems oddly familiar to me. The before and after, they both extend themselves endlessly, so far away that they lack voice of their own. From missed sunsets to dusty, shelved books— from glitter and gold to paper and oxide — I live in every single missed opportunity that others have taken advantage of: those without doubts, those without emptiness.
Do readers enjoy mutilating the main character until somebody else must take his place?
I exhale once more and take a good glimpse of The Hall of Dead Dreams, for I might not come back. I might stay a day or two, maybe even a week or a month, since not all of us can say they have found a place in the hill of melancholy.
But third time’s the charm, and I will not allow this place to eat me whole. And neither should you.
