Sweet Epiphany

Sweet Epiphany: Prologue

This story is dedicated to those who are struggling in silence at three in the morning, to those who quietly cry themselves to sleep at night, to those who wake up with an aching heart but is still brave enough to live another day. Thank you for choosing life every morning and I hope you will continue to do so. It's tough, but I promise you that you are stronger than your giants.

This is for you.

At the age of eighteen, many will start to realize that the experiences in high school are barely scratching the surface of this tough game we call life. All the complain about extra homework and getting picked last during basketball suddenly sounds more like the least unfortunate thing that could ever happen.

I probably should elaborate, but let me start by giving an example.

Picture a tangled-hair man with a really bad aftershave, sitting by a corner on the streets on a cold winter night while eating expired noodles, and that was probably the best thing he has ever tasted in a while now. One would've thought this man got fired from his job and is now living on the streets, except this man was actually a kid who just got brutally dumped by his now ex-girlfriend and dropped out of college after having his scholarship revoked, not to mention, he did get fired from his pathetic coffee-making part time job due to 'poor performance'. Oh, and his rent is now two months overdue.

How pathetic.

That guy was me.

I wasn't always like that. I just made some bad decisions.

One might be thinking: where did I get those expired noodles from? Well, I sort of borrowed it from a store. I'd like to think that I was doing them a favor since it was expired anyway, they would prefer it being stolen than sold to customers and risk a bad review. Wait, did I say stolen? I meant borrowed, really.

I guess I can admit, that was the lowest point throughout my life so far. The funny thing was how I'd began to accept that my life was pretty much over, and I will learn to be happy with what I have left, which was basically nothing, but hey, I try not to sound too realistic when I'm giving a pep talk, especially when it is for myself.

I was ready to give up. I really was.

Just when I was oddly but finally finding comfort with the idea of surrendering to my slow death, something happened. There was a girl.

I can remember it vividly as if it happened yesterday. She was tugging onto her over-sized sweater, trying to beat the fierce wind that was blowing against her direction. Her hair was brown, the kind of brown that made me think of dark chocolate mousse, and she stood out because of her size. She wasn't tall, in fact, she was the prime example of what I'd call petite.

She was walking towards me and for some reasons, I had forgotten it was rude to stare. She caught my eye in the midst of her struggle and frowned. Hesitantly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of crumpled paper and extended it to me. It was a ten dollar note.

Confused, I raised a brow and looked at her again, then it hit me: she thought I was a homeless man begging for money.

I didn't know what to think. To be fair, I hadn't bothered to check my own reflection for what felt like ages, and I was sitting in a corner by the pavements during a cold windy night while holding an empty plastic cup. The large patch of tomato stain on my wrinkled shirt probably didn't help, either. But did I really look that bad, did I reach a point whereby accepting money from kind strangers was my only solution for survival?

"Are you going to take it, or what?" she grumbled. Apparently, this kind stranger wasn't the best at being polite.

"I don't need it." I said, partially to her, mostly to myself. It was then when I noticed her eyes were puffy, red even, and I understood. She was crying.

"What are you talking about? You look like you could use a better meal than that. Take it." She persisted while stifling a sob, shoving the money an inch closer towards my face.

"I'm not homele–"

She forced the crinkly note into my hands, ignoring what I had to say.

"Spend it wisely." She said with a hint of irritation before marching off, resuming the war with the wind.

I was speechless. The next thing I knew, others began tossing coins and spare change into the yellow plastic cup that once contained my dinner. I lost all the urge to correct them that I wasn't asking for money. I couldn't bring myself to explain the situation, so instead, I left, leaving the small cup and the money in it behind. I didn't need it.

I returned to my tattered room, the room that I was going to be thrown out of in a week when I couldn't pay my debts. I remember feeling strange. I was tired, lost, but yet I found a little piece of myself that night, the piece that I've been running away from. I needed help, but I didn't need anyone else's help. I needed my own, and I was going to start trying.

The truth is, despite what people have been saying, despite what I was taught to believe, I really didn't learn that much in high school. Sure, I picked up some knowledge from History and a little bit of problem-solving skills from Math, but I still wasn't really learning.

I stretched out the piece of ten dollar note from my pocket and studied it numbly. During graduation, I thought I was grown up, I thought I was an adult, I thought I could take on the world and whatever it had to offer, but I was wrong. It was precisely after graduation when I inevitably discovered the things in life that are worth learning, the things I knew nothing of.

Everyone has that one turning point in life that hits like a storm. For me, it was at the age of eighteen.

xxx

A/N: Chapter One will be uploaded soon :) Here's a quick glimpse of where Sweet Epiphany will take us. If you enjoyed the chapter, please give it a little vote, perhaps? :P

I appreciate your support and am excited to share this new journey with you. Stay tuned and thank you for reading! Lots of love <3

imperfectdreamer.