Everything moves faster now. The cars roar past me. My fellow students continuously pass me while I'm walking on campus. Why is everyone in such a hurry? Where are they all going? Do they know something I don't? Are they running to something, or are they running from something? Why am I not running? Are they really running?

No, they're not running. They're not running at all. They're just walking. They're all walking at their very own pace. Why is their pace faster than mine?

It's not just them though. The seasons are coming and going more rapidly. Technology is advancing every single day. Wars used to take years, even decades to resolve, but now they take months or even merely weeks. Dogs run faster than they used to. Semesters are passing by faster and faster. At work, I keep going around and around.nowhere. I can't keep up with life anymore.

Maybe nothing is moving faster. Maybe I'm just slowing down. Now that I think of it, I am slowing down. I feel like a dieing battery that's been in a walkman inside a car in mid-January. You try to start that walkman.

And.

It's.

Painfully.

Slow.

So you put it up to the heater, and you push play again. Only this time nothing happens. The battery only worked in the cold because it wasn't under any stress or pressure, and even still, it only worked minimally. Under normal circumstances, the walkman is dead.

How do you get that walkman to work again? You simply replace the batteries.

I wish it were that easy. For years there was never anything that could bring me to life. No batteries to be changed. I needed help. If someone were to just call my name, and actually mean it, that's all it would take. There was no love, there was only ambivalence. I felt nothing. I was numb. A bullet could've penetrated my skin, and all that would come out was crimson nothing.

Like the battery in extreme cold, the only thing I could cling to was hope. Hope for tomorrow. Maybe it would be better tomorrow. Maybe things would change. But they never did. The cold eventually faded because it forgot to remember me. Or maybe I was a lost cause.

So what else could've saved me? Maybe hope still had a shot. Maybe it was memories of friends and the good times that we had in the past. Maybe it would've been love, but that was so bleak and unattainable. Maybe she had a name.

Yes.YES! That's it! She has a name! Maybe it's not an intangible feeling. Maybe.no, no it is! It is the feeling of being cared for by someone who you least expect it from. Finally I've found a tourniquet! Maybe the tourniquet found me. I don't care what it was, because I feel whole again. I am no longer black and white. There is no more nothing, everything was worth it. My ambivalent words will no longer mean nothing! I have worth! I have a reason! And I always will!!

And for the first time, I am able to smile at the kid I just passed on the sidewalk on campus.