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For now

Day 0

Those are weighty words, For. Now. Unspoken and unintended, unreal and meaningless. They are sustaining me, for now. I can't seem to help but add them to the things I have to tell people. I am single, for now. I am leaving, for now. They dampen the despair of separation and the terror of flight. I am putting my affairs in order, for now. Not for death, mind, though given my track record in foreign lands and without a steadying hand to my innate recklessness it is a possibility. For and now are the mahouts shielding me from the immense, hulking reality that has stepped from the corner into the light. And the realities of my life have been tomorrow's problem for a very long time. Obscured by scaffolding and giant concrete walls or hidden behind a pyramid they eventually fill the horizon and I have no choice but to walk towards them with a grim, inevitable foreboding. My heart is drawn towards the darkness, for now.
The desperate and doomed attempt to exert control of my life through insignificant details must stop. Forever. My zero inbox, my perfect loaf of bread, tag, tag, tag. They were the fiddles playing while Rome burned about me. But the flames have crept under the door and my 'control' is ashes and my life too, or so it feels. A midlife crisis is a mocked thing but they are fueled by the realisation that life is finite. That it isn't meant to be spent believing every second can be prolonged if you just know how it is going to pan out. The gentle wind that carried the flames to the door must also carry caution away with it. And me. I need to get away from my always expiring password. To get away from the noise to noisy countries. Away from a dysfunctional country to even more dysfunctional ones. To leave a place where I recognise everyone and know no-one. To cease to exist so that I may.

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