How long has it been since I set foot in this place? Am I dead or am I alive? How long have I been meditating for? Have I even slept? Has Beth even slept since she found me here? Is she my wife or just a figment or my imagination? Why did I even name her after my wife in the first place?

For I stand before a beast with no leash. Constantly teasing it day after day. Yet it does not attack me. The beast is far too bored to even try and harm me. For it does not understand me, it doesn’t care. I am not prey to something so majestic. This thing, this beast, it doesn’t care for what I am. Thus it has no reason to kill me, no reason to treat me as prey. The only thing that it seeks to do with me is to observe me. To foster my growth for its own amusement. For this beast is at play, and I for one hope that I remains at play.

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I continue to tug at the strands of life and death, yet my control over them doesn’t grow. And yet there is nothing tugging back against me, nothing stopping my ascent. So why then do I struggle? Why can I not continue to climb? What is stopping me, who is stopping me? Am I stopping myself, or am I just delusional? The beast offers me no answers, it brings me no respite.

I stand alone, not ready to face what tomorrow brings, for life is uncertain and the present is a gift. The past is useless in its current state. Not even the gift of reflection that it provides does it any good. I cannot predict the uncertain future, for the tides of time prevent me from wading into life’s vast oceans. Nonetheless I try my best here and now, for only the present matters. Any progress that I make now is a blessing, for it allows me to continue my ascent.

Why I do this I am not sure, yet deep down my mind has a reason. I do this for my wife, deep down, that’s why I still live. I do this so as to carry the names of those who came before me. Better to remember the dead than to let them truly perish by being forgotten.