The break is not coming
You kept swimming because the shore was just up ahead. Look closer at what you've been swimming toward.
The break is not coming.
Not next week.
Not after this project, this quarter, this year.
Not when you finally have time.
There is no later where the weight lifts.
You will say yes tomorrow.
You will say yes the day after that.
You will say yes until you cannot say anything at all.
The shore you are swimming toward is painted on the wall.
It has always been painted on the wall.
Every stroke you have ever taken has been toward a picture of land.
And here is the strange mercy of it.
If the shore was never real, you were never failing to reach it.
The exhaustion was not a sign you were doing it wrong.
There was no it. There was no right.
Only the swimming, and the painted wall, and you.
The treadmill keeps running after you step off.
Someone else gets on.
They chase the same painted shore.
This does not end.
It was never going to end.
And somehow, knowing that, the water feels different.