Just Give Me One More Day

The fear arrives before the thing ends. A habit of grieving before anything has actually been lost.

You’re still in the good thing, and already you’re mourning it. The fear doesn’t wait — it takes up space inside the thing you’re afraid of losing. Which means the thing is already a little less good. Already a little diminished. The fear is eating the thing it’s afraid of losing.

You will lose it when it ends. You are also losing it now.

Everything ends. That’s not okay. It’s just true. And there’s nothing in the dread that makes it less true, or delays it, or softens it when it comes. The problem is spending the good part dreading it.

Somewhere there’s a version of you who is just eating dinner with his wife. Just playing games with friends. Just on the phone with his parents. That version gets more of all of it.

One more day. One more day. As if the problem was ever the number of days. There were days. You spent some of them here, in the fear of their ending.

- omegastick