Something happened in between

I looked at myself in the mirror, the darkness making my eyes foggy. A strand of my hair—too thin, withering away. I tried to smile, but it slipped off my lips, too rehearsed, too practiced, as if I looked better without it. The emptiness stood out, a reflection of me. It stood boldly, yet unforeseen. 

All I knew was that time was passing, and I had lost so many versions of myself in between. I had lost the little girl with hopeful eyes. I had lost the teenager with a soulless gaze. I had lost the woman who once looked at the world with careless wonder. 

I had lost myself... 

There was a time—a time in the past when I felt something. 

When my eyes didn’t clog at the thought of my future. 

When my heart didn’t burn at the thought of the past. 

There was a time when control sat in the palm of my hands, and I used it to steer the wheel of my life. The windows down, the midday sun shining through the sunroof, a melancholic song from a time I didn’t know before. One hand outside the window, trying to get a feel of the breeze as I drove down the road, my destination set in stone. 

Yet it seemed the car moved on its own. Even with my hands off the wheel, it kept going. 

I thought I had control. I thought I knew where I was going. 

But did I, really? 

Or was it all just an illusion? 

I can’t tell when I lost control, when the car swerved in the wrong direction. But I had started to see the clouds turning grey, a mist over the windows, faces I can’t recall. 

I saw myself sitting on an old porch by the road, sinking to the floor beneath the heavy coat of the past. A cup of tea so bitter the taste crawled up my arm. The wheels spun out of control, yet the car moved slow. 

The tears came with the soft simmering rains, and I felt my blood turn cold.  Miles and years blurred together, my mind confabulating over what was. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things then. 

But one thing I knew without a doubt— 

This wasn’t the road I had in mind. 

There was blood running down my lips, and I wished I could tell him that I felt the pain. But for some reason, I had let it fold in—so much so that it barely felt like pain anymore. It felt like nothing. 

I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to live. But, God, was I tired of surviving— of living in between. 

Melancholy wraps itself around me now. It pulls down the sleeves of my shirt, creeps into the cornices of my mind. 

I remember everything, yet I remember nothing at all. 

I remember everyone, yet I barely remember you. 

Something happened in between— the moment I realized I was staring at a stranger. 

Was I meant to live stuck in the idea of who I thought I would become, or was I meant to move on with who I had become? 

Something happened in between— the grass went pale. The birds stopped singing. 

Something happened in between. 

I don’t know, but I know.