Life is unsettling and unfair. It’s also beautiful and adventurous. Years melt away like a block of ice on a hot pan. Days drag on, abnormally so. Two and two make four, but sometimes, five and five don’t make ten. What we expect often breaks us; what comes across unsolicited sometimes saves us. This duality, the shades and layers embedded within it, constitutes the essence of life. You can’t do anything about it. I can’t. I couldn’t.

The roads scream with sizzling asphalt during hot summer days; the streets shiver and quiver in freezing winter nights. The old yearn for youth; the young wish to grow old. Children’s excitement knows no heights when they measure their bodies, eager to show how tall and thick they have grown. Adults, meanwhile, ache when they consider how close they are to death or doom.

Women sometimes wish to be men. Men to be women. The former lament the slings and arrows life hurls at them. The latter represses the heaviness of responsibilities hanging loosely on their shoulders. Bystanders’ hearts melt when they witness a woman........

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