PART I:

everyone overthinks. we’re all only human, and overthinking is likely inevitable. whether it’s about one’s appearance, current relationships, the past, the future, one’s career, satisfying everyone, wanting to be liked, problems of money, or even what to post on social media ?!?! (an unfortunate truth about today’s digital age)—we all overthink to an extent.

while i do subconsciously worry about some of these things as a participant in society, i found my overthinking to involve just a bit more than this.

the older i’ve become and the more my soul experienced life in this sleeve, my thoughts had started to grow into an endless and abstract cycle of scribbled ideas, observances, and analytical questions of existence, purpose, life, and of life itself as a whole (especially when the world is as horrific as it is).

is this what goes on in the mind of every post-teen 20-year-old trying to figure life out? maybe. probably. so, i’d brush the thought aside.

except my mind wouldn’t let me.

instead, i’d stay awake until 4 a.m. hosting political and moral debates in my head, thinking of every possible perspective and attempting to empathize and argue contradicting characters i’d create based on stories of real lives. i’d feel deeply distraught and at a state of detachment from exhaustion, thinking about global dilemmas regarding death and disease, the absolute unjust and inhumane treatment of people for utterly wrong reasons, and the loss and suffering of the innocent.

but what are the motives? who defines morality (good vs. evil)? why do people constantly crave power? what’s the point of anything when everything in life—a system of social constructs—is just a cycle of pain, hurting, and greed? does love even exist or is it just the idea of it that pleasures us?

there’s a constant hole in my stomach that only grows deeper the more i understand the pain that life brings. the uselessness in attempting to fix the unfixable of human nature’s selfishness. an act of altruism? true altruism isn’t real. and here we are, taught to live valuing a constructed measurement—time itself—when it is the very thing that also stops us from living.

-k.t.

august 2019

PART II