You Don’t Need To

An exhilarating numbness radiates outward from my bones to my skin. It’s a mixture of deep pain and incredible happiness. Every breath I take is slow and satisfying, though I feel like I could forget to take the next one. Life is at a standstill and yet it is moving so quickly.

Everything is contrary.

The past and the future are moving in opposite directions. It’s like standing between two speeding trains. If I reach my hand out I could touch one and get burned. One train is going east and one going west. You’ll never truly understand the irony of that.

The present is in the middle.

I want to travel to the future without skipping the good parts of the present. I know what’s out there. In the future. That’s the exhilaration I feel. It’s the same feeling you get just before you reach your goal. When you’re exhausted and ready to quit and yet you force yourself to just keep going. To push on. Then the adrenaline kicks in and you feel the rush that propels you forward. It makes my skin tingle.

You feel like you can do anything.

I’m stuck there. At the moment before the adrenaline kicks in. I want to quit. But I don’t need to so I tell myself to keep going. Just keep going. Stop thinking. Focus on the present because it is the fastest way to the future.

The world is in perfect balance when everything is contrary.

It is contrary to reach the point past that which you believed you would go. Or could go. And yet… you are there. The feeling of wanting to be there and not wanting to be there are equal. So I stand still.

I accept that I cannot be anywhere else but in the present.


KB