Writing · Nov 8, 2025
Mirage
Grief dressed in borrowed metaphors — desert, mountain, existential crisis — slowly, reluctantly undressed.
How can you be sad about something that does not exist? A shimmer on the horizon. It pulls you towards it, plays fantasies in your mind. It promises to quench your thirst, or so you think.
You have seen this before. Countless times. You know the ways of the desert. But hope doesn’t want to see reality. You let it play its tricks, you let yourself feel the joy. Temporary as it may be, it feels real enough.
Then the shimmer disappears. You knew it. It breaks you anyway. You weep for the thing that was never meant to be, for a future not written. You stand there disillusioned, thirstier than ever before.
Then shame arrives.
What right do you have to thirst?
From a mountain of opulence, you see the populace struggling to navigate the arduous valley. They see you in awe, you inspire them to reach the summit too.
They cannot see your worn-down face. They cannot see the hollowed corners of your mind and heart.
Why should they? What right do you have to complain?
Isn’t it easy to fight? The imaginary battles where your stomach does not scream, your throat does not ache, and your heart does not yearn for a single day of rest.
Most of them will keep wandering the valley, wishing for battles like yours. They cannot reach you, the plains are shattered for some of them. Deep chasms which will not be filled for hundreds of years.
You worked hard for it, yes. You were not among the favourites. But you were among the participants.
Most of them are down in the chasms, defeated and surrounded by darkness. They do not even remember the light anymore.
But this does not help with the thirst. It arrives anyway.
Surrounded by horrible dance of lights and sounds, you sit in your nice little home. Dressing up your feelings in a comfortable cushion. Putting them on a sheet of paper and burying them beneath clever prose. To hide from them. To hide from yourself.
To not believe that you are sad because of her.
There is no desert, no mountain. You want to hide away. You want to think about the absurdity of life instead. A wonderful distraction. To discredit existence itself rather than accepting that your heart managed to get attached in a week. You do not want to think about her.
She will haunt you for days, in your little desert and in your mountain and in your existential crisis.