The years between life and death

You don’t really die when your heart stops. Most people die long before that. See, a little bit of you dies each time a dream dies. When you realize you’ll never be President, a piece of you dies. Then you realize you’ll never be a sports star or movie star, more of you dies. Then you realize you’ll never have enough money and more of you dies. You try to replace those dreams with better ones but all you gain is more death because those dreams will whisk by as well. The nail in your coffin comes when you realize the biggest dream of all, what has been packaged so beautifully since childhood for you, doesn’t exist. The Blue Prince you dreamed of or the Damsel in Distress you were supposed to save will never be and you find yourself in bed with someone you can’t stand and thirty years have passed by and, really you’re dead. Sure you wake up dress yourself and eat and work and pay bills and sweat at night with someone you never really knew, but that’s not living. There’s no passion in your day, no emotions because all hope is dead. The light you should emit from within has flickered out. Your soul, because that’s what life is not blood pressure and heartbeats, is dead.