The problem with being curious is contentment is the thing you never seem to discover.

The problem with choosing what to do with your life is that you have to choose many more things you will not do.

All those doors, softly shut. All those days, creeping away from a hundred things to fog up the glass on lives behind closed doors. Watching moments you don't have. Voyeur on might-have-been. And then the walk of shame back, and back, and back to your own door, left ajar for you. The sounds and scents like breadcrumbs leading you home.

Sometimes someone fogs up the glass on your door.

"You have your hands full!"

"I could never do what you do."

"I only have this much to handle and I'm struggling, I can't imagine what it must be like for you."

You sigh, you count up the blessings again, one...two...three...four...

And once they've piled up into a mountain at your feet, you sneak away to peer in at the other lives that are full, to imagine what it must be like.

1. Space

Burning cold glitters,

Need and function coalesce--

Stardust into flesh.

2. Air

Formless and heavy,

Effort to lift and push out,

Lungs have to practice.

3. Fire

Thought streaking across

Clouds of concept in bright heat--

Ragged, storming self.

4. Water

Mind and body move,

Skirt obstacles, rush onward,

Swim in liquid time.

5. Earth

Cupped humanity,

In history's dusty hands,

Dying until death.

I can't go back. I can't make different choices or speak to my younger self or use any of the methods of time travel dreamed up by so many who want to reach behind. This path, these choices, this present and the anticipated version of the future that I took--I can't change how it began. It feels like I should be able to, it was my path after all. I forged it myself, I took the trouble of walking through time, moment by moment, making decisions. You would think that would entitle some ownership, and you would think that ownership would come with editing rights. But no. It doesn't. There is only the choice now. And there is only the hope of a future that won't be so full of looking backwards to where it began.

Me: "Look. I don't want to lie to you, but I also don't want to scare you off, so you're going to have to read between the lines here a little. I know you have some embers you keep stoking in your soul, tucked away in a corner where you think I won't find it. I know you want to believe that pedantic chorus of platitudes, take off and see if you can make it to the moon. We both know that the "landing among the stars" is the cold, airless, lifeless, expanse of space where you have nothing between you and your failure. We both know the embers you expect to blaze into rocket fuel are more likely to fizzle into vapor once you hit that icy emptiness waiting for you.

Don't give me that look, I'm not the enemy here.

If you wanted it that badly, you would have taken the time to learn how to build f***in rockets, not sit around poking hot coals of envy inside. This was your call. You chose safe. It's safe here. We can breathe here.

We need to breathe.

We need to breathe."

Myself: "Right! We do need to breathe.

And I'm choking to death down here!

Plodding from minute to minute, choking on the dust of every day, feeling heavier with every passing day, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep on just to keep on, it'll kill me. Kill us. I need something more."

Me: "Oh, just 'something' more? What, exactly. Do you even know?

No, you don't, you have no plan, and no back-up plans, because to have a back-up, you need an original. And you've got nothing--not one thing--that is original."

Myself: "I can't find something original when all I have time for is practicing mundanity! And the only reason I'm stuck doing it, is so we can do it again tomorrow!"

Me: "Just... Listen.

Is it worth the risk? The possible failure. The end of what you can be reasonably sure about. The potential of disappointment from people. The finality of realizing you can't actually make it. The loss of the possibility.

Is it worth the end of who you are?

Is it worth dying for?

...well?

Is it?"

Myself:

[the end]