Welcome to my world

Why don’t you ever read anymore? X asks me. Look at how you spend your time, with those trivialities you worship. You’re afraid, aren’t you, he says, not just lazy but actually afraid to read. Because it pulls you under time, doesn’t it, under all your errands and distractions, under your chatting and your bad jokes, and makes you face yourself, and me, and our horrible predicament, our hatred for each other and our failure. Well, welcome to my world, he says, now get reading, you never finish anything, learn something. I need more than self-help clichés, I need more than your friends, I couldn’t give a shit about your achievements, I’m in prison, the rats are gnawing at my feet, they’re waiting for me to die, learn something, help me! he says. So many years, he says, it seems like a million lifetimes, the endings of a million lifetimes.