Jimin lay awake in bed. Again. The clock beside him read precisely 3am. Again. His head swam in his own voice, confused and scared, shouting at him about the past and the present and the future. It felt like he was drowning. Again.

Jimin had been struggling to sleep properly for the past few weeks. He spent his days smiling and laughing and acting normal. Sometimes he even managed to fool himself into happiness, falling asleep with a semblance of calm around him but every night, at the same time, he awoke to the actuality that was his life.

He felt like he couldn't think but his head was racing with thoughts; never quite fast enough to keep up with the impending tomorrow but at the same time too fast to stop in the contingent today.

“I wanted to become happy and strong but why am I getting weaker? Where am I going? I’m going here and there but I always come back here... Yeah, I’ll probably flow somewhere... Is there an end to this maze?” Jimin asked himself for what felt like the hundredth time this week.

Nothing was going to plan.
He didn't have a plan.
Everything was falling apart.
Nothing had been together in the beginning.

He felt like his life was slipping through the very cracks between his finger but if he were to try and hold on; if here were to try and grip back control he'd lost in the blink of an eye – or maybe had never had – he would crush his everything in the harshness of his own fist; in the harshness of life.

Jimin lay awake, as he did every night and he reminisced back to when things were easier. He thought about the days when his life was ruled by a strict schedule. He thought about the days when his life was dictated and instructed and laid out in front of him. He thought about the days when he was woken, and dressed, and fed, and driven, and taught and he realised he came to miss those days.

He remembered thinking that he felt like a bird in a gilded cage; that all he wanted to do was break free and fly and spread his wings and see the world shrink below him. He remembered thinking that it felt like he couldn't breathe, that he couldn't live. How foolish he was...

“I have a long way to go but why am I running in place? I scream out of frustration but the empty air echoes.... I hope tomorrow will be different from today...” Jimin tried to tell himself. Someone had told him those words once, back when his life was an endless repetition. Someone had told him those words and all these words he'd held them dear. He'd memorised them and cherished them and believed. He'd even immortalised them in ink on his skin. But these days those very words that had helped him through the darkest days, that had given him hope and anticipation for the future seemed like nothing but lies.

He wished he wasn't here. He wished he never really had been.

“I’m just wishing...” he whispered into the empty night.