78 - A New Year, and Still No Answer

The existential crisis always hits hardest the moment the holidays end.

One day you’re drifting through empty hours,

and the next you’re back under fluorescent lights,

realising how small your world has become.

A week off should feel like freedom,

but instead it exposes the truth

without work, 

I don’t know who I am.

The days blur into a haze of streaming videos,

movies I don’t care about,

voices playing in the background

just to keep the silence from swallowing the room.

I consume noise the way others consume air 

not out of interest,

but out of fear of what I might hear

if everything finally went quiet.

I tried going out,

but the world felt distant,

as if it belonged to people with purpose.

So I stayed inside,

in the same spot,

breathing but not really living,

letting the hours pass through me

like I wasn’t even there.

The question kept slipping into my mind,

soft but relentless

Why am I here?

What is the point of any of this?

It echoed through the holidays,

through the empty rooms,

through the days where I felt more like a shadow

than a person.

And then the holiday ended.

I returned to work,

and the answer 

if you can call it that 

became painfully clear.

This is all I have.

The same grind,

the same ache,

the same monotony that holds my days together

like a thin thread.

But work…

work is steady.

Work is numb.

Work is a place where I can disappear

without anyone noticing I’m gone.

It isn’t purpose.

It isn’t meaning.

It’s just something to do

so the emptiness doesn’t swallow everything at once.

For now, I live for the routine.

For now, I move through the days

not with ambition,

not with hope,

but with the simple intention

to keep going.

Just survival 

nothing more,

nothing less.