Creative writing exercise: A Place You Loved-Destroyed.

Dreams to nightmares. That would best describe my once loved place.
      I put my all into it. Time, energy, invested money, current money, sweat and tears. Some blood was most likely shed there too. Just scissor cuts, but all the same, I shed blood.

It was the most beautiful salon I had ever seen, still to this day, all 7,000 sq ft. My heart and mind believed in it and it was my 3^rd child. Sadly, my first 2 children would attest that at one point it received more time and attention than they did. However, now, I can hardly stand the sight of it and will avoid traveling down its road if there is another way to get where I am going. Too many negative thoughts and feelings revisit me when I am near it.

After 2 years and 2 Martinis I drove there, just to make myself do it. It was the first time my car had been back in that parking lot. Could I make myself get out and walk to the double door entrance?

A teardrop fell on my hand that was cupped around my eyes as I peered through the glass.
  Still. My mind and body were still.
  It was all destroyed.
  Memories replayed what it once looked like; emotions replayed what it once felt like. I wished I could forget at least a few parts, (and hoped I had, but simply couldn’t remember.) Yet, I always want to remember …

I once was the owner with a key, but now was a passerby looking in a window through a blur of soft tears. 
 

I looked at the entrance floor just a few feet in front of me. Hours I spent sitting in that spot on New Year’s Eve 5 years earlier, designing and laying every piece of mosaic tile to welcome each guest.

Then, I walked down the sidewalk, looking in the 2 story-tall window, trying to piece back together what once was and is now history. Not history that will ever be in a textbook, simply my personal history.

There in front of me were the remains of my hard work. I encased 4 areas with bricks, designed to look like outdoors inside. Some of those bricks remained, but most were gone. The wrecking crew had no idea, nor did they care, that they were literally destroying and tearing down the tangible part of my dream, all that was left. How could any sane person destroy glitter covered bricks?

     Soon after I had opened the salon, it caught fire, but we extinguished it. Then a tornado ripped through the area, and my salon was unharmed. WHY? Why could a natural disaster not have been the end of the road? Why did I have to pull the plug?

     I looked, wondered, remembered and left. Sad on one hand, but happy I could drive away without an obligation to return.

One year later I heard that space held a new business, someone else’s dream, I suppose. I found myself there, this time entering through the door for a walk through. I was not greeted by mosaic artwork on the floor. My masterpiece was gone, replaced by a mat. To the eyes and smile that greeted me, I was merely a customer coming in for a browse … and someone witnessing another dream come true for another brave soul, such as I had been. I walked through the top and bottom floor, remembering the good as the newfound energy of another’s dream and hard work united with mine. It was a different dream and a different place now, but it was well with my soul.

Kasi