Recently, I’ve been stressed, and things I never bothered to acknowledge started surfacing. Questions that don’t ask for answers. Questions that keep me awake.

It’s been over two months of this. Life was never easy for me, but this is different. This is the fear of my own mortality, gripping me in a way nothing else has.

I can’t sleep at night. I can’t think in the morning.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

This could be my last entry, or maybe there will be more. I don’t know. The uncertainty itself feels unbearable.

As if that wasn’t enough, I rewatched The Lunchbox. This film is special to me because it shows the most likely version of my future except without the dead wife. Just me.

Watching life from a balcony. Children playing. Trying to reason my way into an explanation for my own existence.

I see young people and old people. Poor people and rich people. Couples. Friends.

And then I see myself.

When you live in a place filled with younger people, and you have to walk everywhere, you see life constantly in motion. But none of it relates to you. You remain an observer.

The years you didn’t act begin to compound. So do the consequences.

Comparison becomes a habit. Happiness feels inaccessible.

Walking helps.
Talking helps.

And then it returns.

They say this too shall pass.
But some things don’t pass through you ; they stay.

Like an appendage.
Useless.
Always there.