018 - with apologies to
over the past little while you’ve gotten into the habit of regularly saying good morning and good night to a few quite dear people in your life, little digital reminders of “hey. i’m alive. i’m thinking of you”. it's a nice bookend to your days, which otherwise, have been flowing straight into one another like molasses. you can't really remember how long you've been doing this for.
wake up. send half a dozen messages. eat breakfast. go to work. go home. eat dinner. send half a dozen messages. go to sleep.
you can feel the twitch in your arm again, the one that tends to come back whenever things get bad. you wonder if the twitch is correlated with the feeling you get in your chest with every too-strong beat of your heart.
you wonder if everyone feels their heart this strongly, if everyone has such a constant and visceral reminder of their own life. you wonder if your idle thoughts about your heart just fucking exploding one day will ever come to pass.
wake up. eat breakfast. go to work. go home. eat dinner. go to sleep.
you wake up from a dream about dying. contrary to what the british new wave may have suggested, you just feel worse, you just feel empty. you consider trying to write, trying to turn your emptiness into something beautiful, but anything you try just slips through your fingers, and besides, you’re late for work. you sit in relative silence in the car, still a little lost in the feeling.
wake up eat breakfast go to work go home eat dinner
you search your day for a landmark, something to give your day some meaning, anything to give your day some meaning. when that fails, you search yesterday. when that fails, you realise you can't remember the day before. you sit there almost unable to move and try to write, something, anything, just to prove you're still alive.
lie in bed. sit on your phone for a while, try your hardest to delay the cycle. feel the twitch in your arm and wonder.
go to sleep.