“And so, being young and dipt in folly
I fell in love with melancholy.”
—Edgar Allan Poe
It is an indiscernible yet ever-present feeling. A feeling not unlike that of drifting through a blackout, each step a stumble towards nowhere, each breath a thin gasp in stale air. Meaning unspools, threads snap and the day repeats like a scratched record that no one lifts.
Most mornings I pace the same cracked pavement to class. I can’t pinpoint the moment everything numbed, the color draining from view. Maybe it leaked out slowly, maybe it vanished overnight. The days loop, déjà vu, on an endless reel, bells chiming the same weary note, concrete chewing the same tired gum.
2 a.m. walks by the sea should soothe me. Instead, I stagger along the shoreline aimlessly, sinking under the weight of my own checklists. I stand shoulder to shoulder with friends (whom I sit surrounded by as I draft this piece) who are also ticking boxes for a future we can no longer picture. We talk about internships and college deposits while the tide laps at our ankles like a ticking clock—the hush between waves hiding old confessions I never quite let surface, perhaps to my own detriment. We laugh too loud because silence might make us hear how lost we are.
I keep trying to put a name to this feeling. Sad? Not quite. Burnt out? Well, yes, but not what I am momentarily describing. Ennui. Disillusionment. That’s it. A poison in slow motion. A dulling of the bright edges we once carried.
We live in the death throes of the Age of Reason. News apps glow red with war zones, market crashes, climate alarms. Sirens of a society cuffed to its own chaos. Streetlights flicker, city grids brown out and the wider sky dims one bulb at a time. Outside darkens. Inside, I’m inundated with sorrow and the bitter aftertaste of ambition.
On paper, I should be proud. Acceptances secured. Scholarships sealed. Milestones scribbled on a café receipt from one late Parisien night along the Seine, the river wind cutting under the glow of gas lamps. I watched strangers drift past — each life lit in uniquely exquisite colors — and felt the soft blur of dépaysement, the untranslatable joy of being someone and someplace “other.” Every line of the checklists now reads “fait accompli,” already crossed off, yet somehow, all of it feels hollow — comme rien.
Pride, it turns out, is a paper-thin blanket in a blizzard. I wrap it tight and still freeze.
Three days from now, our class will walk across the stage. Cameras will flash; I might cry, might laugh, or might do both at once. I’ll walk the stage, surrounded by applause and the occasional cheer. I’ll hold the diploma tightly and still wonder if I’ve truly earned any clear direction. Yet, we go all the same.
So I clutch the only answer that doesn’t taste like a lie: I don’t know. I don’t know how to move when the ground shifts, how to plan beyond next week when tomorrow frays. But admitting it cracks open a window. Fresh air rushes in.
If the outer light keeps failing, I will spark my own match—even if it singes my fingers. I will glow enough for you to see your next step. You will glow enough for me to see mine. In an era that seems designed to bruise, choose to love, to feel, to smile. Not as naïve gestures, but as acts of stubborn defiance. Tiny rebellions stitched together against the encroaching night.
We’re lost, but we’re still breathing. That counts. Feel the ache, taste the fear, still choose to rise. Move on—adrift, yes, but alive—through the noise. Hope is rarely the cure, but it is always a refusal to stay dark.
I guard hope—a stubborn, incandescent flamme—and I’ll hold it out to anyone who wishes to seize it.
Au départ, avec l’amour for the art that is life,
A fellow traveler.
