Fatigue has become my constant companion, through time upon time. Other people seem distant to me now, like accessories to the surreal tableau of fantasy that is my existence. She is always there, ever present just outside full awareness. I’m pretty sure I’m always there, more or less.

The dream is my future, as is she. I have seen it, lived it, jumped away from it. The jump has never gone well, a disordered leap to a random time, disoriented and unsure of what just happened, or what will have recently happened.

I have become a little loose on time and tense of late.

I have jumped late, to days before she finds me, takes me, binds my mind. I have jumped early, to the recesses of my childhood where I have hoped in vain to avoid her. Lifetimes upon lifetimes have been spent changing this or that to escape my fate, all to no avail so far.

This time was to be the last, one way or another. This time I was going to get it right, and that meant going back to the beginning.

Back to the day of swearing.