I don’t know. This night, this night, my brain is filled with a foggy void. I don’t know if it’s just fatigue, just this irregular sleep-wake cycle that keeps me spinning in hopeless circles.

North, true North, then back again. I stared at the stars, not really believing that they could spell out some sort of destiny.

There are portents, and then there’s just portentiousness.

I’ve been hoping that something would change for the better for so long now. And now I’ve gotten used to this mediocre unchanging scenery, this low-level misery (not really suffering, but not really enjoying it either), that change is beginning to frighten me.

(This despite remembering that Life says “Change or die!”)

Who wants to live forever anyway?

I don’t know why I am so fascinated by things that I can’t do anything about. Like, I can’t help but wonder, when did I cross that line? When could I still have been saved? What was that point that doomed me to eternal damnation? Or, I suppose, when was it still worth saving me? When did my soul finally crumple like a crushed aluminum can, collapsing under the weight of my insecurities, my weaknesses, my flaws? (No light can ever escape.)

It’s not so much suspense as it is a sense of languishing. Like being stranded in a third world country, knowing that you are late for the biggest day of your life. You don’t know if you’ll ever get out, and who knows what sort of irreversible changes will have occurred to the life you left behind?

(What is it that I’m trying to say? Why do I find myself flailing around for words, looking for whatever comes easiest, like I’m trying to patch up a badly-built damn, lest I drown in the fetid floodwaters?)

The simplest thing to believe (not the easiest thing, but the simplest thing) is that nothing good is going to happen. That this is it, for the rest of my (hopefully not too long) life. I’m left with the inexorable decline of aging, staring the precipice in the face the whole, painful, excruciatingly slow way down.

Where is the reset button to this thing? I want to start over, damn it!

(Who did I hope to reach with these clumsy words? Who am I trying to make a connection to? What am I trying to bridge? If the answer is, truly is, as I suspect—if the answer is no one, then I may as well surrender now.)

(Silence, vacancy, absence—these are the things that have shaped my life these last handful of years. I am so alone, I don’t know what to do with endless vastness of empty space. It sprawls before me with endless horizons, infinite spaces, and I’m trapped in a solipsistic universe.)

What the hell do I want? Maybe nothing. Maybe the end of wanting is the true beginning of the end. Desire has been burned out of me. I have these occasional wanton impulses, but even those eventually die stillborn in my heart. Why try when nothing is ever going to work out? It’s hard to kick that sullen habit out of my self.

(It’s not the result, it’s the process. Maybe. That’s what they claim.)

I seriously give up. At least for now. Don’t hope that I’m going to start making any sense tomorrow. Further decline is inevitable.