a museum of future losses

the half truth is that you're special. the whole truth is that you're not.

The half-truth is that there's time. 
The whole truth is that there isn't.

Time is not generous. It's a pickpocket with invisible hands. You swear it was there—you search your body but only find a phantom limb.

The panic is cellular. Not operatic. Not screaming. It barely hisses. It lives like dampness in the walls—imperceptible at first. Is it slightly wet? No, it must only be cold. Can you feel that?

But it eventually seeps through small cracks: the unopened letters, the silent kitchens, the birthdays that feel like any other Tuesday. We used to undress each other. Now, we don't bother undressing at all. It's unsettling, knowing that every missed moment is forever out of reach, filed away—archived, uneditable.

If you rehearse disaster, will you be spared? As if readiness is protection. You try to preempt the collapse—double knots, triple checks, pinky promises. As if tragedy can be outmaneuvered with rituals. Anticipatory grief becomes a permanent condition, a busybody always in the background, rearranging the variables, preparing the walls in a museum of future losses. But people disappear mid-sentence without warning or curation.

The half-truth is that you have control.
The whole truth is that you don't.

So, then, what?

Freedom. It doesn't crash in like a revelation. It doesn't arrive with trumpets. It doesn't arrive all at once. It's a slight shift here and there. A loosening. A shedding of the ornamental. The knowledge that nothing is owed to you becomes permission to want less—or permission to want everything.

You start touching things again. Not for meaning, just for the feeling. You stop being impressed by the performance. What was once exhilarating, then exhausting, now is expendable. You start to worship smaller gods: a piece of coconut cake, a cat sleeping in the sun, a circled line in a book. You stop bargaining. The game has never been fair, but the final score levels the field.

You let go of the need to be remarkable. And for the first time, it's a relief.

The half truth is that you're special.
The whole truth is that you're not.

It feels good to be tiny. It feels good to be nothing. 

It feels good to be just like everyone else.

*this post was inspired by

velvet reverie

’s Escapril poetry prompts.

---

I'm 3 songs away from having the new record ready to mix, but lyrics haven't been coming to me as naturally as they usually do, so I wanted to do something more creative for this week's post rather than another essay. Also, I start training as a death doula tomorrow, and I'm pretty consumed by the emotions surrounding that. I couldn't get myself in the headspace to write about much else atm. But thanks for the suggestions in the chat, and I promise I'll get to those subjects soon in future posts.

c u next tuesday.

XX CARRÉ