Entropy

You know those days or weeks or months when you can feel the entropy of the universe in every fiber of your being? When it feels like everyone is sick or dying all around you and everything is falling apart because everything is meant to fall apart and everyone is supposed to die. You suddenly feel like everything you do is just patching the latest hole in the ship and bailing out what water you can while it rises anyway, and you're starting to see the holes and cracks that aren't there yet, and...


Nothing is enough, because the ship wasn't built for you... Was never intended to do what you wanted or needed... And you just can't ever be good enough to fix that. You know with certainty, you understand in that moment that even trying too hard... bailing water too passionately... patching too many holes too wildly and too quickly... all of that is part of the trap.


Part of staying afloat a little longer is accepting this inevitability and accepting your limits and pacing yourself while you watch the water creep up. Only... only you can't see the water. You don't know where it is or how high it's gotten out how much time is left. You just feel it getting higher and higher.


It's the nameless shapeless monster in the dark, that creeping inevitability. That entropy.


And you want to cry, but you're afraid that your tears will help it, that amorphous nothingness. You're afraid that talking about it will make it stronger.


It feeds off everything. Your weakness and your strength. Your friends and family and all your support.


But you say it out loud anyway. You find a way to whisper it, and know it for what it is.


The truth.