The world is crashing down around you. The pillars that kept your skies as high as your dreams would reach are crumbling and with it, the last amount of peace that you took for granted. The ground is shaking. The thunder is rumbling. The world around you shows all the signs that it’s coming to an end. It’s deafening. The mouths of your friends and loved ones are moving but the words just aren’t audible. The darkness of uncertainty and fear is quickly consuming the warmth and light that your loved ones provide. It’s getting dark and cold, the deafening sound of silence after a heavy night of snow makes this all seem so eerily quiet. Confusion takes over. Doubt dangles hope in front of you like a carrot. The prospect of misery looms within the darkness, taunting you that your displacement could happen at any second now. There is no time here. There’s the constant torture of glimpses into different futures of what could happen and what will happen. Time doesn’t live here. Yet, it’s the thing I want most. How many times have I heard the pleading to unknown forces for just five more minutes with this person. Yet, here I am, experiencing the same cries and lament that ate away at some of my trusted companions. Never understanding or grasping the tremendous weight that’s slowly squeezing the life out of you with every labored breath. It isn’t hope I seek out. It’s the pleading for more time. The anger that comes with the confusion. The hot coals are stoked within, angry as to why this is just so fucking unfair and cruel. Life waits for nobody. It kicks you in the balls after it had coffee not because it felt like it, but it simply just does as it moves on and reminds you that there aren’t sides to this game. Falling tears like robust waves of emotion have a strange way of crippling you, disabling everything normal about you. Yet, the world spins, TV shows are made, people live. You’re reminded that the world around you isn’t consumed by darkness. It isn’t fear and terror that reign supreme. It’s just a brutal, heartbreaking lesson that time is fair and undefeated.