You get to a point in your thirties where you realize that nothing and no one waits around for you, time isn’t easing up, that you’re just a drop in the ocean. You’re not going against the stream, the stream is simply an illusion of motion. You’re standing completely still, a notification buzzing on your phone makes you light up, but it’s just another one about the temperature outside. No one remembers who you are, no one thinks about you, no one knows you, and in fact no one cares about you.

You return to what you think is the root, you attempt to reach out to something fundamental, something at your core. You’re looking back, reading messages sent to you in 2010 realizing that it hasn’t been a few years, but literal decades.

Messages between best friends who never reached out again, game invites you never accepted, another day wasted on the couch, while your best friend whom you ditched school with is married with kids. You’re stuck in a prison without walls, without guards, without limitations written down anywhere, but in your mind. In you. The very fabric of your soul has enshrined basic limitations that you’re unable to escape from.

For a moment you can dull the pain, the discomfort, you can avoid facing reality, you can pretend like you’re drifting towards something not realizing that you’re simply passively watching as the world goes on without you.

And time and time again you return to the notion of making a last ditch effort, a singular attempt at some sort of escape. You’re foolish, this is all there is, all that will ever be. And you’re left staring at your one and only answer. It’s written down plain for anyone to see. But are you brave enough to read it?