A Message For The Time Travellers

I pity the time traveller,

because I too have learnt to fear deja vu,

to know what it is to live a life afraid;

afraid that all of this is temporary,

the paralytic dread that all of this means nothing.

You will wake up one day,

and the last three years will have been nothing but a dream.

I pity the time traveller,

because I too know what it is to wake up adrift in time,

the days turning into weeks into months,

shrouded by a fog too dark to see through,

pretending as if you were present for those lengths of time

that only your body lived through.

I pity the time traveller,

because I too know what it is like to be given a power

that you were told would save the world.

I sit now a doubter - the world doesnt want to be saved and I,

I am nothing but someone who was peddled false promises,

fighting paradoxical thoughts.

I pity the time traveller,

the one who has witnessed their own death

a thousand times,

who has seen the infinite possibilities of a life in which they were never born,

who thinks about death more than they care to admit,

thinks about a life in which everyone they love has all the opportunities,

that their happenstance has taken from them,

thinks about a life in which it all stops here,

who has seen the extending circle of destruction their absence has wrought.

I pity that time traveller,

I have been them far too many times.

I pity the time traveller,

that has worked so hard to fix things that cannot be fixed,

that has been dumped in a time that refuses to change,

the time traveller that is tired,

I am tired,

the time traveller disillusioned but still enduring,

I am still enduring,

the time traveller that has stared down the barrel of the grandfather paradox

and longs for self destruction.

I pity the time traveller,

that was not meant to be here,

that is living on borrowed time,

that knows that all of this is post death,

is extra,

but still doesn't know what to do with it,

the time traveller,

that has found their way to the future

but is still stuck in the past.

I pity the time traveller,

because I have been them,

every single one of them,

and after all this time,

I am still adrift.

But still time prevails.

I prevail.

I imagine that one day,

a different time traveller

will witness

and pity me

and I hope that when that day comes,

I can tell them;

that time is a complex thing,

that fear is just the thing that comes before bravery,

that it is okay to feel lost,

that death is a concept more than it is a promise,

that you don't have to save the world to be allowed to be a person,

that self destruction is a passing phase,

that all of this will mean something one day.

I wait for that time.