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Hold It.

How long can we stay like this? The books haven’t been opened in ages. There might be insects burrowing holes into the pages. The circled dates are a week away, but I feel months away from everything. Grades, marksheets, things we need to sign up for—it’s satisfactory for the core subject. That’s supposed to be good. But now I wonder what I even did to get those grades, and I can already see my fall.

The start is always perfect. I’m starting to think there’s no balance in success. It’s this height of obsession no one can afford to replicate. Everyone is capable, but only some reach, and only one catches it. And in them, there’s this unbearable need to win.

It quite literally surpasses them. A broken bone? Nothing. If they had to touch their heart to make it real, they’d rip their body open in a heartbeat. Success—the height of it, the taste of it. There’s no balance in madness. It’s a sickening, quick fall, but it feels slow. It feels so real compared to everything else. It’s great because only you see it, only you feel it as it is.

All you’re left with is the execution of a vision, and it’s beautiful, and it’s fulfilled. But the itch stays. Another idea calls for your body’s wear and tear. Rip it open. Only then can you do it justice. Slowly, over the week, you recover, only for it to happen again. I can’t do it. But I have to. You’ve forced me into this life of utter perfectionism. Now that I’m in, I have to be sleepless. I have to be everything, because I know nothing else.

I don’t know how to hold success without dying for it. A martyr for the vision—then it’s fine. Easy way out. Easy way out. The slow poisoning is an easy way out. The death claims you, but for the sake of what I’ve wanted all along.

I don’t mind this death, but I must have many lives, for there are so many things I want completed. I fear this one is far too little. This life isn’t restrictive or limiting. It’s my mind that is.

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