The Passion

The Passion

“The cord of love bound us for many years until life, reckless and careless, danced messily over it. A little of his pride, a touch of my foolishness, and the unravelling began. In the end, all that remained was a fragile thread, holding us only because of how much I needed him and how much he desired something about me.

But when I looked at my hand, I found nothing. Only the ghost of his touch lingered. I was holding nothing but illusions, memories, and remnants of a love that had long since faded”.

He tossed his classic glasses onto his elegant desk, speaking with deliberate indifference.
"Have you separated?"

"Me?!"

“Yes, Sophie. I see that you’ve finally broken up,” my boss said, his tone as detached as ever.

"How did you know?"

"Since you started working at this magazine, the whole city has known your love story. You’ve always been generous in sharing the details."

"I've written many articles here. Some were about my love story, yes, but I’ve covered plenty of other topics too," I said, defending myself against his absurd accusation.

"Other topics? You mean the ones your lover fed you? What he eats, what he loves, what he wants?" He leaned back, studying me. "It’s obvious from your latest article that you’ve separated. And I suppose that means you’re out of material. You have nothing left to offer your readers."

I stared at him, stunned. After all the months I had worked for him, after all I had given to this magazine, he dismissed me so easily. He erased

my accomplishments, my words, my worth as if they had never mattered.

He told me he was exhausted by my love stories, that the readers already knew everything and there was nothing left to say. His decision was final: I had to leave.

"Fine," I said, my voice steady. "I’ll go. But you and your readers don’t know this about me I have always known how to leave. I have loved leaving. I have loved its details, its inevitability. So no, it does not scare me."

At the human resources office, they handed me my certificate, full of glowing praise about my accuracy, my commitment, my creativity. I read it with a hollow smile, knowing it was written out of obligation, not sincerity. The same man who had just dismissed me had, by protocol, been forced to praise me in writing even as he discarded me in person.

The moment of my departure stretched, slow and heavy beneath the gloating eyes of my enemies, the quiet sadness of my friends, and the indifference of those who never cared whether I stayed or left.

And then, at that moment, an ending became a beginning.

I entered my small office one last time, gathering my papers, my documents, my belongings. Before stepping out, I shut the door with force, severing not just my connection to this place, but the ambitions and dreams I had once hidden behind it. And unintentionally, I also severed the last fragile thread that still connected me to Matthew.

*******************

I stepped out into the street, gasping for air, for sunlight, for warmth the only things I needed now. I didn’t turn back for one last look. Instead, I lifted my head, inhaling deeply, taking in all the air around me. And then I ran toward it.

The tram was already waiting just as it always had. It never grew tired of me, never tired of my footsteps approaching it. It arrived swiftly, as if it understood how desperately I needed to go home.

It carried me gently through the city, the sound of its nostalgic wheels and familiar stops accompanying me like an old friend.

I entered my house and immediately spotted a small piece of paper on the table. My heart already knew what it said so much that it told me not to bother reading it. But my eyes, along with some stubborn trace of hope, insisted otherwise. Despite everything, a part of me still believed he would be here.

I ignored both despair and hope and unfolded the note. It was from Matthew. He hadn’t bothered to face me, to say goodbye, or even to check if I was okay. Instead, he left me words. Cold, final words.

I read the letter where we had once shared countless mornings and evenings together at our table. In it, Matthew explained that he was leaving me because I was too traditional. He spoke of the new the thrill of novelty, the splendour of change. He wrote about the woman he had met by chance, a woman who stirred his jealousy and emotions. Every day, she surprised him with a different look, an unpredictable nature, something fresh and exciting. Fate had brought them together, he claimed, because he deserved the best, and now, they were living the most beautiful love story.

He told me not to wait for him; he would never return.

At the end of his letter, he offered me advice. I didn’t read it. Instead, I tore the paper into shreds and threw it into the dirtiest corner of my trash bin.

Life is like my mother it never gives you just one slap. It always comes with a second.

I sank onto the sofa, leaning back and closing my eyes, hoping for a moment of rest. I waited for my mind to tell me what to do next. My mind had always been kind to me, sending little messages, whispering reassurances You’re fine. Life will get better. You can do this. You will achieve that.

But this time, I needed something different. I needed more than comfort. I needed a command, a spark, something strong enough to pull me out of this wreckage and push me forward. I didn’t have to wait long. My mind knew I was impatient it knew I trusted its messages completely.

And then, finally, the voice came.

It was like my father’s voice, gentle yet firm, saying: "Use whatever you have."

I opened my eyes. What do I have?

I asked myself the question, confused because, as far as I knew, I had never possessed anything truly valuable.

But my mind had spoken. That meant there must be something. Something important. Something close.

I stood and walked to my room, searching through my possessions. My eyes scanned the space, moving from corner to corner. I had nothing but a little money. Too little of everything.

Then, I lifted my gaze to the mirror, as if the answer might be hidden in my reflection.

I stared at myself carefully.

Dishevelled hair, dull and lifeless.

A face marked by exhaustion and sleepless nights.

Lips, dry and cracked.

And my eyes tired, hollow, unfamiliar.

Even my body seemed defeated. When I looked down at my chest, I saw nothing but two frails, sleeping creatures like worn-out rabbits in deep slumber.

I sighed.

"I'm sorry, my kind mind," I whispered. "I have nothing."

Sometimes, you open your eyes and see your life for the first time. It’s as if you’ve been blind all these years, unaware of your surroundings, unaware of yourself.

“Is this really the place I’ve been living in all this time?”

My home was unfit for life or love. Had my eyes deceived me every single day, allowing me to exist in this chaos while whispering that everything was fine? Or had they tried to warn me, and I simply chose to ignore them? Either way, I had never truly seen before.

But now, I did. And I hated what I saw.

This wasn’t me. This wasn’t my place.

I grabbed my bag and ran. Ran from the disorder, the suffocating walls, the version of myself that I no longer recognized. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t even know how I had gotten here.

Whenever fear consumed me, when I was drowning in questions without answers, I always turned to her. Because she always knew.

I needed to see Maggie. I needed safety, even just a little. I had reached the edge of an abyss, teetering on the brink of collapse. I had nothing. And yet, I needed everything.

I wanted her to tell me Can I start over? Can I get what I want? But how do you build something out of nothing? I had too many questions, and some required more than one answer.

But Maggie knew.

Maggie; My best friend. She had everything. Her kitchen was the “Granary of Rome” overflowing with food and drink. Her bag was a miniature pharmacy, stocked with every kind of cosmetic, nail polish, and moisturizer imaginable. Her closet was a department store of clothes, shoes, and accessories. And her bed? Never empty. Everything was so much. Everything was abundant. But everything was also very, very cheap.

When I finally reached her house, I knocked on the door relentlessly. I needed her more than the air I was struggling to breathe.

“Sophie, my sweetheart!”

“I missed you, Maggie. I need you. I really do.”

I threw myself into her arms and broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. My body trembled as if something terrifying was closing in on me or worse, as if that terror was inside me, and I was trying to escape it by running to her. Maggie, alarmed, helped me inside. She had never seen me this weak before.

I collapsed onto the large sofa the same one that had been a silent witness to all my stories. Meanwhile, Maggie rushed to her bedroom.

She was kicking someone out; A man, probably in his thirties, strolled out of her room in colourful shorts and an undershirt. A large bag dangled from his hand. I watched as he slipped Maggie’s red necklace inside, followed by a bottle of wine. Then he wandered into the kitchen, stuffing bread, cheese, and even a can of salt into the expanding bag, as if it could swallow everything.

I stopped crying and simply watched. Pointing at him, I called out to Maggie. She met my gaze with a knowing look and said, “It’s okay, Sophie.” The man threw on his jacket, struggling to close the overstuffed bag. Before leaving, he smiled and told Maggie he’d be back soon he hadn’t finished taking everything yet.

Maggie sat beside me, pulling me into a tight but fragile embrace. It was as if she needed to hold me just as much as I needed to be held.

I wiped my tears, drawing strength from her steady hands and a sense of safety from her presence. I needed to find myself again to find Sophie.

The strong Sophie. The one who had faced countless challenges. The one who had promised Maggie that we would survive this journey together.

“Maggie, you have so much, but you don’t use it well,” I whispered.

“And you” she countered, “don’t have anything. Except for one thing you knew how to use it.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

She sighed. “Sophie, you only ever knew how to satisfy Matthew. You let him control your life in the most terrifying way.”

“He left me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

Maggie exhaled. “Oh, Sophie. I’m so sorry.”

“I was kicked out of the magazine because of Matthew because all I ever wrote about was Matthew. Everyone saw it. They knew I was

obsessed with a tired, repetitive, and ultimately lonely love story.”

“I told you he would destroy you.”

“I don’t want to talk about the past,” I said firmly. “I want to use what I have.”

Maggie raised a brow. “Do you have money? How much was your last paycheck?”

“Not enough to mention.”

“So, what do you have?”

“Nothing.” I met her eyes. “That’s why I’m here to ask you what I need to start over.”

Maggie chuckled darkly. “Let me get this straight you have no job, no boyfriend, no money, and you want to start over?” She smirked. “I can imagine how that’ll go.”

“You’re going to frustrate me.”

She gently took my hand, then wrapped her arms around me from behind, guiding me toward her bedroom mirror, positioned me in front of it and asked,

“How much do you need to fix everything that you and Matthew ruined?”

“I didn’t ruin anything,” I shot back. “I’m still me. Remember when Tom pulled up in his luxury car? He ignored every other woman and flirted with me.”

Maggie snorted. “He wasn’t flirting. He was squeezing your breast like a stress ball because his girlfriend dumped him for his best friend.”

I crossed my arms. “Still, he chose my breast.”

“He used your breast,” she corrected.

I scoffed. “Please, don’t talk to me about being used. I just watched a man loot your house.”

Maggie shrugged. “I took more from him. We had sex five times. You have no idea what that man can do.”

I cast all my thoughts behind me, realizing with a heavy heart that I had been wrong. Every sign, every whisper of life itself, confirmed my failure. Even the air around me seemed to murmur in quiet judgment, as if the universe had conspired to remind me that I had fallen completely, irreversibly.

It was that dreadful moment when you lose everything you once held dear everything you believed you couldn’t live without. The very essence of your existence, what you thought was the "oxygen" of your life, vanishes into nothingness. A dense fog surrounds you, clouding your vision. The future is an abyss; the past a haunting spectre you dare not confront. Your steps falter. Your body betrays you. And then, you fall.

But just as I was sinking into the void, a hand my friend’s hand reached out, offering a sliver of hope. It told me my story wasn’t over. Yet, I had no strength left, no fire to cling to for another moment. My self-confidence had crumbled, and doubt seeped into every crevice of my mind. I questioned everything my choices, my beliefs, even my existence.

Then comes that terrifying thought. The urge to let go of something, anything, just to ease the weight. And I prayed that the thing I let go of wouldn't be “me”.

But; “passion”, buried deep within me, rose like an unexpected hero. It refused to let me succumb. Instead of surrendering to the darkness, I chose to shed my fears, my failures, my old self. I would start over not as the person I had been, nor as someone else’s reflection, but as a completely new version of myself.

Maggie once told me, "Everything has a price. If you want to take, you must first give. What you dismiss as absurd may be another’s lifeline: their wish, their dream, their long-awaited hope. You can have what you need, but only if you are willing to give something in return." I absorbed her words like a sponge, taking in every syllable, every lesson, every subtle nuance. I no longer trusted my own judgment. I was too lost, too broken. So, I listened. I listened to Maggie, to the wisdom and folly of the men who drifted in and out of her home. I took in the reckless words of the drunk, the measured advice of the sage, the murmurs of desire, the echoes of regret. Even Maggie’s cries of ecstasy, raw and unfiltered, became a kind of inspiration.

Slowly, piece by piece, my new self-took shape.

And when I had heard enough when I had drunk in every lesson, every verdict and every fragment of life that had passed through that house I knew it was time. The world was waiting. My work was unfinished. I had to go back, because I had a story to rewrite. And a lot of work awaited me.

I went back to my apartment on Sunday evening, started tidying up my room, and putting all the cosmetics and clothes I had bought with Maggie to arrange it. Then I sat on my laptop to update my CV to apply for a new job. I wrote about my articles, achievements, and my work since my graduation when I decided to leave the field of art, scriptwriting, and filmmaking, to give up my passion, and entered that magazine to get the small salary that destroyed my dream month after month.

I asked myself while I remembered the amount of that salary. Is this the reward that I am entitled to? Do I want it? And does the new Sophie want to write again in that tiny column in the corner of the page below? Or I want to see the splendour of my writing on cinema screens, where the beautiful stars ... music, lights, and Cameras Lenses. However, I chose the sparkle to be the theme of my next life. I wiped everything I wrote and started writing a new CV, this time I wanted to express my ambition and the dream that I drew to achieve it. But! I do not have any achievements or even beginnings in the field of script. I just have the words of "Tom", That man who is fifty years old, in which he lost his mind because of wine. when the owner of the store told him not to take bread from her table, but he took the largest piece of bread saying: "If you want something from life you must take it! ''. So, I decided to take wisdom from the mouths of madmen and take from the world what I want.

********************

The next morning, I decided to start fulfilling my dream. However, I had to wait so long to see that light. my dream that I had postponed for years and threw it behind my back to get that salary and that job that I left before they gave me the honour to leave it and push it. I woke up early on a day that I called "my day". I began to prepare myself for what I was asking the destiny to give it to me, where I know that wishes require a lot of effort and a lot of everything; But I am sure what I have is enough to achieve what I want. I wore an elegant red dress that is uncovered, it shows more than what it covered.  exposed all my legs and allowed my breast to rise and even jump high because of the sponges that I put it. It’s Maggie's idea she said it will help me to push it up, and I also added some small towels so that it slightly increased its size to look huge and sexy.  One of Maggie's fans told me that a gorgeous breast makes up 90 percent of the chances of accepting you to jobs, and a sexy back will bring you to the fore.

Now I am a charming and self-confident woman, I used all the details of my femininity and prepared all my weapons. Nothing can stop me from achieving what I want, because I know well what I want, and I know how I will get it. nights of sadness, slaps of time with all that betrayal and that deprivation, I volunteered them for me and made them as bright stairs, I will use it to go up on to reach the glory. I looked at my little notebook, reading the names and addresses of all the production companies that I spent a very long time collecting. then I started with the first address.  The company's headquarters was very close to my home, so it took only a few minutes to get there.  My heart told me that this is a wonderful sign of fate telling me that everything is fine, luck is on my side, and my dream is very close, like that company. The entrance of the company was promising for a good start. It encouraged me to confidently move towards the handsome guy who was sitting at the reception desk, his breast was slightly bigger than my breast, but he was not the only one who had that perfect breast. All the guys in the company were so gorgeous and they were not wearing bras, as if a beautiful fate pushed their breast up gently.

I was able to convince the receptionist of the importance of the meeting with the manager as I am the type of person who does not believe in taking appointments, I prefer to come suddenly like destiny and take what I want whenever I want. 

I am compelling, insisting on my request and demanding but with elegance. Between my insistence, fake breast, and some pampering he agreed, so I went into the director's office, he has plump sexy lips and the most wonderful breast I made sure that he was the director because of the wonderful breast and the big butt, which he told me later that he got it in  Thailand for not much money, he did not mind me touching them and making sure it looks very natural.

He was generous with me in everything and did not skimp on his experience, even he helped me rearrange the sponges on my breast after he told me they were placed in a very simplistic way and not professional. but he praised my idea of ​​putting more towels to raise the breast and push it in a better way. At the end of the meeting, he wished me good luck in my search for work, as their company currently does not need more stories, as their work schedule is as full as his lips.  But he gave me his doctor's card, which performed all plastic surgery. Although I did not get the job, I learned many lessons from that beautiful and mesmerizing manager. I continued my searching journey, visiting all the companies on my list. my chance in the next company was not better, but I continued my search with full strength and did not despair