At a crossroads.

I've been so hung up on all these things lately; all these exasperatingly mundane yet contradictingly significant things that keep swirling around my mind. And at the end of every day, the only word left in my thoroughly spent mind is 'Why?' Indeed, why.

Why is it that I can probably think of a million things I want to do tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after that and the day after that... but at the end of it all, not have done a single one?

I want to go for morning jogs and watch dew crystallise on green leaves in a park. I want to eat that damn slice of chocolate cake and not worry about the calories going straight down to my butt. I want to stay up all night watching Friends re-runs and sing as loud as I want in the shower and dance on the streets and walk the streets of a city in the dead of the night. I want to paint my walls whatever colour I want them and try all the recipes I see and learn how to juggle and lie on a sandy beach to watch the sunrise. I want to jump in puddles of water and kick up piles of autumn leaves and stay up all night laughing. I want to read good books and throw parties and buy new boxes of sharpened colour pencils and run freely on a large patch of green grass with rolling hills all around me. I want to love with all my heart and make the people around me happy everyday and be happy and be loved and believe in the goodness of the world and the compassion of mankind.

I want a life that sizzles and is larger than life and makes me laugh out loud every day. And most of all, I don't want to get to the end and realise that my life never really amounted to anything more than a lie fabricated out of self-limitation.

The start of something not-so-new.

Tinted windows are swung open hastily, forming acute angles with smooth wooden panes. Not far in the background, hues of green mask a critter - or two - screeching insouciantly, creating fissures in the brittle afternoon air like thin cracks on a slab of dark chocolate. Oh how bittersweet.

In the horizon, rain clouds hang threateningly, in a fashion not unlike that of overzealous bullies; only too ready to dampen, to crush, to destroy. And lording over all of mankind, without which the world would be rendered absolutely hapless, a great fiery ball, its usual incandescence dulled by interpolated wisps of grey.

At last, this living mural is complete. Or is it?

But on this afternoon, the world is nothing more than a giant melting pot - colours, shapes, sizes, smells, sounds all rallying together to form a slush of delicate emotions, unwanted thoughts and hints of a strange annoyance.

As if right on cue, the pounding - or is it just in my head? - gets louder. Like a heartbeat, rhymthically, methodically, steadily. Faster, faster and faster yet.

I can't take this anymore.
(After all, it's nothing more than muscle mass no bigger than the size of my palm. Maybe that's all we amount to at the end of the day. Who knows. Who cares.)

and then,
silence,
silence,
silence.

And now I'm scared.