There used to be this light that burned bright at the end of my mind. Every morning when I woke it would shine for a brief but splendid moment, illuminating all there was to achieve in the coming hours. Every evening as I would go to sleep it would flicker softly in between each blink as my consciousness began to fade and my eyes fought to stay open, ending my days with a warm glow of acceptance. I treasured this light. It was my comfort, my ambition, my security and my motivation.

I no longer get visits from it. Upon each morning I wake, I see nothing but the white walls of a ceiling I barely know. With blank stares I spend the following waking hours wandering the land in front of me with listless intentions. Barley touching the ground I am cemented to the floor. And when I find myself back in bed once more, the end of the day feels no different to its start. Pointless and aimless; does a person even need sleep if there is nothing for which they live? Believing in a balance of greed and grace forces a pragmatically calculated sense of absolute nothing. If there is not a negative, there is no need for its inverse. I do believe there is some sort of law of physics about this.

Perhaps Newton was also depressed.

I miss my light. The light of body warmth and the sound of laughter when I can’t fall asleep. The light of gentle reminders that my directionless life of wasted potential could as easily be a gift of unbridled opportunity, just depends on how I’m feeling. Such a thought used to jolt excitement. A quick switch up, a morning latte with extra sweetness and I’m back on my feet. But these days, no matter how I approach I cannot seem to muster the right angle to gain perspective. I seem to have lost the light at the end of my mind. And these days, its beginning to feel like its gone for good.

I know my heart beats! So why don’t I feel it?

When my chest swells to the point where the bones of my ribcage hum with the dullness of pinpointed pressure, I stick my head out the car window and scream for the whole city, “I’m in love with you!”

So why don’t I feel it?

Regardless of how I analyze, or how I try to simplify, the fight through my feelings to hear my core renders the same conclusion each time. I am sat in a tunnel with darkness at both ends. I failed to recall your name the other day. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t bring myself to say it. I failed to recall what it was like to hold myself in the light. The face that stared back at me felt empty and foreign. What I scream for the city, I can no longer bring myself to believe.

Last night I drove out to the bridge. With tears riddled across my heart and tears who refused to break my eyes, I begged so earnestly. “Please be enough for me.” I stood one leg over the edge, holding onto the suspension of the structure and feeling the fragility of time in front of me. There is so much control in this moment. Who you can become, who you will become, and everything that is yet to come stood laid out in the night air beyond me. Playing a montage of cameos with faces I no longer knew and could not recognize, I prayed to a secular god. “Please be enough for me.”

There is only us in this life.

“Please, let me be enough.”