“It’s Late. It Will Only Get Later.”

3 min readJan 18, 2021

“…please give me some of whatever it is that makes you complete, I want whatever that wholeness that you just summoned out of nothing and put into your work, you were complete in some way that I never was…I want to know how to be a good person, I want to know how not to hate myself. Please!”
— The Beginner’s Guide

I’m not sleeping much these days. Hot off yet another work opportunity I didn’t deserve, I am anxious, and alone.

“It’s late.”

3:45 A.M.

“It will only get later.”

The computer screen goes dark once again, inactive after I distract myself with something on TikTok. Again.

This is all so self-indulgent, but I am crumbling, feeling estranged from everyone and everything around me. My life is changing rapidly, but also not at all.

In the last 6 months, I’ve lost the thread tying me to most of my family, lost grip of all my relationships. My mouth does not know how to pronounce the things that my heart feels and my fingers are weighed down the moment I try to put any thoughts to paper.

Isn’t this what I’m good at, spinning the wool of words into some sense of understanding? I don’t know anymore. I wish I did.

5:23 A.M.

Even this essay feels inadequate; I am unable to explain what is even the matter with me. I’ve lost the only magic I’ve ever had.

I scramble for answers, going back to all the things that used to make me special. Watercolor, embroidery, theatre, criticism, clothes: I cannot make anything. My actions are stale and uninspired, breathing out recycled air and thoughts.

Each day feels so much like the last, but just different enough to be nauseating. There’s something hollow in my chest, carved out where I used to keep love and passion and something tied to my soul.

I’d give anything to feel something again.