*19-12-2025*

i keep talking to myself. inside.

i started thinking about age and time again. about decades stacked like shelves, people placed on them as if life can be sorted cleanly by numbers. but the moment i placed myself on one of those shelves, everything cracked open. i realized i’m standing right at the edge of something. not childhood anymore, not whatever comes next either. i can see forward just enough for it to terrify me, and backward just enough for it to ache.

i tell myself:
you’re young, you’re forming, you’re not supposed to know yet.
then another part of me fires back immediately.. why not? why shouldnt i know? why should ignorance be a requirement for survival? i dont want to stumble into a life by accident and then wake up years later asking how i ended up somewhere i never chose. the idea of choosing blindly scares me more than choosing wrongly.

the more i think, the more everything seems to loop back to the same pressure point.
stability. money. control
over my own time and space. the way the world quietly demands effort just to let you exist without panic. i can feel how easily a life can turn into maintenance mode..
keeping things from collapsing rather than building anything that feels alive.

i keep arguing with myself about whether fear is rational or just anticipatory. one voice says im catastrophizing, projecting worst case futures that havent happened yet.
the other says no, look around, the patterns are already here. look at how hard people work just to stay afloat. look at how often effort doesnt translate into safety. look at how this mode of production rewards a few and drain the rest. it doesnt feel like paranoia when the evidence is everywhere.

i notice how often my thoughts slide into absolutes.
always. never. forever.
i catch myself doing it, and still i cant stop.
the future becomes this long corridor with no exits, just obligations stacking on top of obligations. responsibility without rest. continuity without relief. i try to imagine myself older, carrying all of that calmly, and my brain refuses to render the image. it just blanks out.

then i think about the things that make me feel human.
art. sttories. sound. worlds that don't ask anything from me except attention. i panic at the thought of losing access to them..
not because they are luxuries, but because they are oxygen.
i dont want a life where the things that keep me sane are treated like indulgences i have to earn back after being drained all day.
i dont want them rationed into weekends or fragments. the fear isnt that i wont succeed; its that i will *HAVE* to succeed into a shape of life where i'm probably wayy too tired to care.

another voice interrupts:
people do this. people survive. people even find meaning.
and i snap back internally.. at what cost? how much of themselves do they shave off to make it work? how many compromises before the word "enough" stops meaning anything?
im not asking for perfection.
im asking for livability.

i feel angry today, and i dont want to pretend its just mood.
its like a structural anger, yk?
the kind that comes from realizing how much of suffering is manufactured, normalized, explained away.
i can trace so many of my fears back to the same root:
scarcity enforced by design.
time turned into currency.
worth measured by output.
it all traces back to capital.. EVERY. SINGLE. THING.
it feels obscene that something so artificial can dictate something as intimate as whether i get to breathe without dread.

and yet.. even as i spiral.. i notice something uncomfortable. im not actually in danger right now. im just "abit" safe in the immediate sense. the fear lives almost entirely in projection. im reacting to a life that has not arrived yet as if itss already tightening around my throat. part of me wonders if im trying to solve the future to avoid sitting with the present.

i argue with myself again. if nothing is guaranteed, why try at all?
the world doesnt seem interested in giving those out.

i keep circling back to one truth:
i dont hate living fully..
i hate the terms and conditions.
i hate how little room there is to be soft, curious, slow.
i hate how easily people are reduced to functions.

tonight, the conversation in my head doesnt resolve.
it just settles into a truce.
imm not convinced things will be okay.
im also not convinced they're doomed beyond repair.
both positions feel too final. so i sit in the middle while i'm uneasy aware, but still breathing. maybe thats all this day is asking of me.

if nothing else, im writing this to leave a marker.
proof that i noticed.
proof that i questioned.
i stayed present enough to argue with myself..
and maybe thats.. idk. i wont end this entry with hope. i end it with honesty.
im scared.
im angry.
im thinking too much.