In the quiet depths of my soul I face the utter void of lonely existence. There is nowhere I can turn to for solace and comfort, no safe harbor where my heart can rest. I am floating and bobbing on this empty sea like a ship that has lost its mooring, and all I can do is try to find the words that will keep me afloat. With the new dawn comes a new horizon, and I try not to think that with everyday, the shore seems no nearer. You would think that being lost at sea for this long, I would’ve just taken up the life of a sailor, the life of a pirate, sailing the seven seas, and never longing for land. But I still long.

The count, the reckoning, is now in years and, yes, nonetheless, I have forgotten what living on land is like. The longing is just this vague and senseless desolation eating away at my insides like a cancer, leaving me weak and feverish. Even sleep is no comfort, dreaming no surcease.

And yet, at the least, I have regained the habit of awaiting the next sunrise. As long as there are pages to flip, I cannot simply put the book down. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get there some day. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but to just give up now and forget about it is foolish conceit. I can’t claim to know what will happen. Maybe I’ll be right after all, when the reckoning is in decades, and I am still without a haven in sight, but I cannot claim that there is no land out there until I have actually sailed those infinite leagues.

But I have ceased to hope. My heart will no longer flutter with joy when I see dark shapes upon the horizon. I do not dare hope that it might be land, and I dare not stray from my course only to find out that they were only clouds after all. And, yes, I have surely sailed past land, maybe even entire continents, without being brave enough to attempt a landing, but I have forgotten how to navigate the shoals, how to keep from running aground, and I suppose I would rather be half-alive and moving, then complete dead and still.

I suppose I would rather choose the familiar misery.

But, yeah, it’s slowly killing me. I can feel it: My soul calcifying, my heart being ground down into senseless meat.

I do not know what to say, how to be, what to do, I am lost in my own life, a victim of my own circumstances, disempowered by my own failures. I don’t know what I want, but I am tired of looking, and these little things scrape and tear at my skin.

For the most part, you do not die from big massive wounds—it’s really the accumulation of small wounds here and there that do you in, and I am too young to want to die but too old to pretend I’m immortal and that I can’t be wounded, and a desperate man clinging to a pathetic life is, I suppose, not really a man at all, just some hopeless shadow, trying to stay in the sunlight, but this is all I’ve got, this is all I know, and I really don’t know what else I can do.

What can I say? Futile or not, tomorrow is another day.