The world will end before I do.

It is time.

My body aches, pulling me into a sudden, jarring consciousness—an eerie and familiar sensation, like the realization that you’ve missed the train you’ve been waiting for your entire life. A train that barrels toward the light, only to vanish into the abyss of a final tunnel.

My eyes are wide open, yet I cannot grasp what surrounds me. My thoughts cascade inward, looping like an infinite echo. For years, I’ve lived like this—trapped in the folds of my mind, where the external world brushes past me, barely grazing my skin. Yet tonight, something has shifted. The night terror returns, a grotesque performance pushing the day's unspoken agony to its apex.

Above me, the ceiling stretches and dissolves into an endless void. The blackness presses down, a suffocating mass, as my heart thrashes violently, desperate to escape my chest. I clutch at the threads of existence, reminding myself of what is real, of the here and now. My unblinking eyes dart to the window, searching for any sign of the approaching dawn. But all I find is the dim, inescapable blue of the night—an eternal night. I sleep through the light and wake only to the darkness, as though my soul is forever misaligned with the world.

My eyes burn, and my head pounds. Chaos—raw, untamed chaos—erupts in my mind, galaxies colliding in a fevered dance.

The fragments of my thoughts scatter like stardust, and in the maelstrom, I whisper to myself: “Breathe. Good thoughts, breathe.” The heat rises within me, a smoldering furnace in my belly and skull. It feels like the universe is shutting its curtains mid-performance, leaving me stranded in a half-lived act. I am not ready. I am not prepared to let go.

I am here. I want to remember.

How did it feel when the sun shone on my face?

When life unfolded in its ordinary brilliance?

I fight to recall it—to drag fragments of a once-lived reality back to the surface.

A memory surfaces: my father leading us through the garden, his camera capturing us in fleeting moments of joy. Time froze in those photographs, proof that someone once cared enough to hold our existence still, even if only for a heartbeat. The pictures live on, outlasting the lives we’ve since abandoned.

Another memory emerges on the beach. Tears prick my eyes as it comes alive within me. The sun hung bright and defiant in the sky, its golden light bathing the vast, endless sea. The sand was soft beneath my feet, warm and inviting, as I walked barefoot along the shore. The waves roared and whispered equally, pulling me closer only to send me scrambling away, collecting shells in a game of fleeting victories.

And then, my last day of high school. It was a moment brimming with possibility, freedom painted across my chest as I stood on the precipice of a future so full of light that it blinded me. I was young, and the world stretched like an infinite horizon.

But are these memories as they were, or have I reshaped them into something softer, brighter?

Do we romanticize the past because it gives us an anchor, a reason to endure the present darkness? Perhaps.

Perhaps I must remember it this way.

I need to believe there is something worth fighting for that might bring back the sun.

I close my eyes, desperate for sleep, though my mind is a restless machine. I try to summon the good, the happy, but my memory falters. It fractures.

A fleeting thought rises from the chaos, chilling and profound: the world will end before I do.

And somehow, this thought offers both dread and solace.