My Worst Nightmare: Excerpt

The Gathering Storm

Episode 1: My Worst Nightmare

It was the Fall of 2008, eight years after the sale of my business and I was finally beginning to enjoy my stress-free life of ‘freedom’ as a retired business owner at 63 years of age.

I’ll never forget that early sunny morning in October…

The phone rang.

It was a call from my financial adviser to give me the ominous news that would have triggered most people’s worst nightmare!

It certainly did mine!

It was news I never expected to hear.

The stock market was spiraling out of control sucking over a trillion dollars from the investment portfolios of millions of ill-prepared and shocked investors just like myself.

My life savings were one of the many casualties.
My money was fast disappearing draining my life energy taking with it my retirement and future dreams. I could do little to nothing to stop it.

It felt like I had been violently pushed from the peak of my assumed secure life ‘mountain’, and was tumbling terror-stricken and breathless down the void of my mind into some kind of cold and horrible abyss far below.

I never felt more frightened, desperate, and alone in all my life.

I had experienced terrible traumas in the past, though none so devastating as this one.

My body was numb from the blast of the shocking news.

In the aftershock, all I could remember hearing was the distant seconds of my former life, ticking away into oblivion.

It was like a countdown to the start of a life change beyond my wildest imagination.

Reflection

I discovered other ‘worlds’ do exist in the empty spaces between seconds…

My life had been sucked into
one of them, in the burning blink
of an eye.