At times it seems truly impossibly that this life can continue. What am I trying to achieve with each increasingly gormless move? What plausible future exists where I am not forever drowned in shadow? I must be violating some basic laws of existence by even being here. Because whichever empty room I happen to physically inhabit, I know that my soul is still trapped, waiting at that station, in perpetual hope that the brakeman will turn my way. Someone tells me that was ten years ago -- I can process the words, and understand them rationally, but I see no competing explanation. My mind travels back to that place every day, but my aging body inches farther and farther away. Thus increases the gap, the pain at the sight of this, and then the gap once more; what life is this? Every future I can see is a desert that cannot be conquered. In the one I seem to be edging along by default, my only means of quenching thirst is by shedding an ocean of tears with each step forward.