There’s a guitar in the corner of my room. I haven’t touched it in three years.
The case is dusty now. But sometimes, late at night, I catch a faint smell from it. Wood. Old strings. Cigarette smoke from coffee shops I used to play in.
I remember when music felt like breathing. Now it feels like a luxury I can’t afford.
This is not the dramatic death of dreams they show in movies. No violins. No tearful goodbyes. Just slow suffocation. Grain by grain. Like a sandcastle disappearing under a tide of bills and responsibilities.
I didn’t choose to stop. I just… stopped. One day became one week. One week became one month. Then three years passed and the guitar stayed in its corner, waiting for a version of me that no longer exists.
The alarm rings at 6 AM now. When I was twenty-two, I thought waking before noon was a crime against creativity. Time felt infinite then. An empty highway stretching to the horizon.
Now time comes in forty-hour chunks. Measured in paychecks. Divided between landlords and utility companies and the grocery store where I buy generic cereal because brand names are for people who can afford preferences.
My commute passes an art supply store. I used to spend hours there. Running my fingers over paint tubes. Prussian Blue. Cadmium Yellow. Names that promised sunsets I’d never seen.
The store window still displays the same easels. The same brushes standing at attention. Waiting for orders that never come.
I tell myself I’ll stop in this weekend. I’ve been telling myself this for two years. Weekends belong to laundry now. Meal prep. The hundred small maintenances required to keep a practical life from collapsing.
I have notebooks. Not the leather-bound journals I once wanted. Dollar store spirals. Cheap paper. Inside them live half-formed characters. Stories that will never be finished. Voices growing fainter with each passing month.
Sometimes I write on the train. Phone balanced on my knee. Tapping sentences between stops. But the words feel disconnected. Messages in bottles thrown into an ocean of exhaustion.
Nobody reads them. Nobody ever will.
In dreams, I still stand on stages. My paintings hang in galleries. Publishers call with good news. Then I wake up. The shower runs cold because the water heater is old. I’m late for a meeting about quarterly projections.
The dream dissolves. Like sugar in rain.
There’s a specific weight to carrying abandoned dreams. Not sharp pain. Just a dull ache that settles in your bones like weather. You learn to navigate around it. This phantom limb of creativity. Still reaching for things that are no longer there.
My fingers still curve around invisible paintbrushes when I’m thinking. My throat still hums melodies that will never become songs. The muscle memory remains even when the practice stops.
I heat my lunch in the office microwave. Scroll through social media. Former classmates post photos from book launches. Gallery openings. Concert venues.
I hit the heart button. Type congratulations. My fingers remember the weight of brushes, the resistance of clay, the click of typewriter keys.
The envy sits in my stomach like undigested food. Bitter. Familiar.
My bank account defines my choices. Enough for rent. Groceries. Lights. Not enough to risk. Not enough to leap. Not enough to chase things that once made me feel alive.
Financial stability feels like a cage. Each bill is a bar. It keeps me contained but safe. Trapped but secure.
I tell myself this is temporary. This practical life. This sensible path. But temporary has stretched into years. Years become decades when you’re not paying attention.
The news talks about people who followed their dreams. People who took risks and won. People who turned passion into profit.
I fold laundry and remind myself: for every success story, thousands failed. Thousands tried and lost. Thousands are folding their own laundry right now, wondering the same things I wonder.
This helps a little. Not much.
My friend Rahim was a painter. Good one. Really good. He quit his job to paint full-time. For two years, he struggled. Then he gave up. Went back to accounting. He doesn’t paint anymore. Says looking at blank canvas makes him feel sick.
My friend Sara wrote poetry. Published some in small magazines. Then she had children. Bills multiplied. Time shrank. She hasn’t written in five years. Says she doesn’t miss it.
I think she’s lying. I think Rahim is lying too. We all lie about the things we’ve lost. It’s easier than admitting we’re still bleeding.
The thing about dreams is they don’t die cleanly. They linger. They haunt. They sit in corners gathering dust, reminding you of who you were supposed to become.
Some nights, after the bills are paid and dishes are done, I stand in front of that guitar case. My fingers trace the worn handle. I think about opening it. Tuning the strings. Playing something. Anything.
Then I look at the clock. It’s late. Tomorrow is early. There’s a meeting. There’s always a meeting.
I leave the guitar where it is. Go to bed. Try to sleep.
But here’s the thing I’ve started to understand. Dreams don’t die. Not really. They just sleep.
Inside that case, beneath strings that haven’t been tuned in months, something waits. Patient. Quiet. Not dead but resting. Not abandoned but postponed.
Seeds in winter soil don’t look like much. Dark. Cold. Still. But they’re not gone. They’re waiting for spring.
Maybe I’m waiting too. Maybe one day the bills will ease. The time will expand. The courage will return.
Or maybe I’ll grow old and the guitar will stay in its corner forever. Unopened. Unplayed. A monument to a person I almost became.
I don’t know which future is coming. Nobody does.
But tonight, before bed, I did something different. I opened the case. Just for a moment. Looked at the guitar inside. Ran my fingers over the strings.
They were out of tune. Badly out of tune.
I didn’t play. But I touched them. Felt them. Remembered.
It’s not much. But it’s something.
The dreams are still there. Waiting. Patient as dust.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll tune a string. Just one. See how it sounds.
Maybe the person I was supposed to become is not gone. Just sleeping.
Maybe spring is closer than I think.
Or maybe not. But hoping costs nothing.
And the guitar will wait. It has learned to wait.
So have I.