Ophelia’s Strength (FREE to read!)

What was that?!

Ophelia’s POV

The next morning my alarm went off at 5:30 am. Time to get up and make breakfast. I tiptoed around as to not wake John, I would wait until the last possible moment to disturb him, he was always extra grumbly in the mornings. He expected a full breakfast made, his clothes laid out, and his lunch packed before he was awake.

I went to put a plate of food on the table and noticed a beautiful butterfly outside of the window. Unfortunately it distracted me and I tripped, making a loud noise and spilling the food on the floor. I heard John stirring and panicked. I tried to salvage what I could and clean up the mess before he made his appearance, but it was a futile attempt. “What a f**** great morning! I see breakfast is ruined and what a way to wake me. You truly are hopeless.” I apologized and told him that it would be no problem to make something else really quick. “Just don’t,” he said. “ I’m just going to go to work hungry, it’s probably better than whatever you made anyways,”.

This hurt because I used to love cooking and baking. It was always something I had felt I was really good at. I loved being creative and mixing flavours and creating new dishes just from intuition. When John and I first begun dating he used to rave about my cooking, telling me I had ruined restaurants for him as they could never compete. He had ruined it now though, managing to take the joy I used to find away from me.

He hurried to get ready, grabbed his lunch, and stormed out of the door. I heard his big over the top truck fire up, I waited for it to pull away so I could breathe a sigh of relief, but I didn’t hear it. He ran back inside to yell “ I am calling to make you an appointment with the doctor today, make sure you look decent in case they can fit you in when I’m done work!”.

Finally his truck pulled away and I could enjoy some peace. I thought about everything I needed to do today. So many things and so little time. I poured myself a coffee and decided laundry would be a good place to start.

I went down to the basement where the laundry room was located. I hated this basement, it was old, dingy, and just gave me the creeps. I pulled the clothes out of the dryer and put them in the basket. As I was picking the basket up I bumped my cup of coffee and spilled it right in the basket.

“Oh no!!!!!” I yelled, the basket of clothes was full of white shirts. I was so upset picturing the trouble this would get me into. Why did I bring my coffee down here?! I picked up the shirt that had the most coffee on it and started wildly shaking it. I don’t know why, it just felt like the thing to do, take my anger out a bit. I stared at the stain as I was shaking the shirt wishing so hard the stain would disappear, I closed my eyes and gave one final shake. When I opened them it was gone! The shirt was bright white!

“Huh!” I said to myself out loud, “how is this possible, what just happened?!”. I was stumped. I looked at the basked of laundry and saw that there were still a few splashes on coffee on a few of the other shirts. I looked again at the one I was holding, it was perfectly clean. “I must be losing my marbles?” I reasoned out loud. I was so confused. I needed to get out of the basement. I threw the remaining stained shirts into the washing machine and added the maximum amount of bleach and hoped for the best. I ran upstairs as fast as I could.

I decided that I must be suffering some serious side effects from exhaustion. I knew that I had not been getting enough sleep, and I had just been so busy during the day trying to keep up with all that was expected of me. Yard work, housework, home renovations, cooking, etc. it was just go, go, go. I knew I didn’t have time to nap, but I felt so utterly tired and confused. I didn’t want to go crazy. I crawled in bed and set an alarm, a one hour nap would hopefully fix me.

I curled up and fell quickly into a deep deep sleep. I had a vivid dream where I was in a beautiful valley surrounded by flowers and butterflies. There was a beautiful cottage, it was styled like a miniature castle. I walked towards it and felt like I was home. I relished the feeling, it was something that I hadn’t felt in a long time now. I sat at the little table in the cottage and sipped on a tea that appeared in front of me. This was a lovely dream. A beautiful woman appeared and sat down in front of me. “You will find this feeling, you will find where you belong,” she told me. “ You are so much more than you ever could believe, you are just coming into your powers and will find your strength. I need you to search in yourself for a feeling of power, a feeling of confidence. I need you to leave where you are. That is not home, that is not love.”

I didn’t say anything in the dream I just sat and listened. I felt the most relaxed and happy that I had felt in the two years I had been living in my miserable position. Part of me knew this was a dream, I hoped I could stay here as long as possible and relish in this feeling.