Mat Dugard.

Dear Dugard,

When did drinking water become a daily goal? It’s strange,
how something meant to help can start to feel like something you can fail.

Dear Dugard,

I admire the way they meme their sadness, as casually as discussing the weather.

Dear Dugard,

It’s been a little while.

I’ve felt restrained lately. Not by fear exactly, but by possibility. Creative freedom is supposed to feel like flight, but it also carries weight. Every open door quietly asks to be chosen, and suddenly standing still feels safer than stepping wrong.

Everything looks promising. Everything feels worth trying. And so I don’t move at all.

My ideas stretch out like horizons; wide, glowing, endless. But they don’t point anywhere. There’s no edge to walk toward, no clear place to stop.

I begin things easily. Ending them is harder.

I wonder if direction isn’t something you find,
but something you choose and whether choosing one thing means learning to let the others stay unfinished.

Perhaps regret isn’t about what we never did,
but about learning to live alongside the ideas we never finished.

Dear Dugard,
I miss when things took time. When waiting meant something. The long static between songs on a mixtape, the tremor of handwriting on paper, the ache that came from not knowing instantly. Everything hurts differently now, digitally, softly, in pixels and pings. I scroll to feel something, but it's frictionless. No Texture, no pause, no proof that I was ever really here. Maybe that's what I miss most: the slowness that made feeling feel real...