I feel like I have been torn to pieces
and put back together again...
I feel like I have loved so hard, for so long,
but now I am convinced that
all the love that I once felt is gone.

I have always been a dreamer
and an unwavering optimist;
but now I see only one path before me:
the same one as that of the sun,
and one day, too, I will have shined my last,
and I will finally be free of all pain.

I have felt many connections over my life,
but almost all of the people
with whom I have shared so much
have long since gone their own way
and anything once felt has been lost.

This is what happens,
this is what has happened,
this is what I never anticipated,
this is what I never could have predicted;
but as times change
so too are people remade -
especially when they find themselves
at a crossroads, scarred by life,
and not willing to repeat the same cycle
that they have been struggling to live through
over and over, seemingly without end.

What should we do,
What would we do,
What can we do to feel something,
anything, like we once felt before?

But there is no way back.
There is no way to start anew.
There is no way to know what
would have happened if different
choices had been made -
especially when each and every day
feels simultaneously like the first and the last.

There is no way other than to
reach for tomorrow,
and hope that what we find
will once again remind us of
where we came from
and why we are still alive.

There is always a way forward,
even after something akin to
the "End of the World" -
but, if you want to give the version
of you
who rises out of the ashes of what came before
something that they will keep with them
in the new world of the future that awaits them,
you could do no better
than to gift a thought of hope
and a promise that everything
will be OK as long as they
choose to embrace, and do not fear,
the burden that is sometimes felt
by those of us who would
class ourselves as survivors.