You will face one moment in your life when you are first shown how despicable existence can be. It will not knock. It’ll crash. And when it does, it will leave you winded. It will demolish the unsullied perceptions that you have spent your life establishing. That moment will become your first archive.
After, you will try to grasp on to the feeble hope you previously possessed – expecting to be embraced by its warmth – but as your fingertips graze upon it, a sense of emptiness will engulf you instead. It grips your heart, its claws digging into the fragile flesh. For the first time in your life, you will endure the true agony of living – you no longer know what’s missing; you just know something is.
From that day forward, life will become a quest for solace; religion, sex, love, drugs, success, money – all of which subconsciously aim to fill you again with the warmth you once had. You will kiss people just to feel your lips against something. You’ll laugh louder than you mean to. You’ll cry in bathrooms at parties. You’ll light candles, whisper prayers, drink too much, run until your legs collapse. Sometimes you’ll feel the void so immensely that you’d clutch onto anything and everything that could bring you consolation, no matter how diminutive, destructive, or dishonourable.
These moments, too, will become part of your archive – the invisible collection of what it means to be alive. In the end, what remains are the artefacts: endurance, tenacity, resolve. So, when the dust settles, ask yourself: what will I carry forward? What will I keep?
And what must I finally set down, to make space for living again?
Breathe, breathe, breathe. It’s okay. Life is too much and never enough. That is how it will always be. Let it crush you. Let it fix you. Let it be.
