Autopilot.
I move without reason now. There’s no fuel left in me, no fight. Everything inside has grown hard and used, like hands that have forgotten how to feel. I can’t tell what I’m searching for anymore. Most days, I just keep going. Autopilot.
Sometimes I wonder if the tunnel ever ends. If there’s a light waiting somewhere, or if it’s only the darkness that lasts. I ask myself whether the future still holds anything, contentment, happiness, a sense of worth. The words sound foreign now.
What was I made for? What were any of us made for? People talk about purpose as if it’s something you can touch. I used to think I had one. Now I’m not sure it ever existed.
I stand on an empty platform. The train has gone. I watched it leave without me. I saw it with my own eyes, small, fading into the horizon. I didn’t call out. I just watched until it was gone.
Maybe I’m not a good man.
But I know how to follow orders.
I know how to endure.
That’s enough to make me a soldier.
And that’s all I’ve ever been.
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