60 — Something Mag

You un-become the striver. That relentless engine in your chest that needed the promotion, the bigger house, the nod of approval from a father who is now gone—it finally sputters. And the silence is terrifying at first. You mistake it for depression. It’s not. It’s presence .

The knee that aches before it rains. The reading glasses scattered like landmines across every room. The list of medications that sounds like a law firm. The night sweats that are no longer metaphorical. 60 something mag

Staying when the diagnosis comes. Staying when the friend says the unforgivable thing because their own grief is leaking out of them. Staying when the country feels like it’s tearing itself apart. Staying when your own reflection startles you. You un-become the striver

When you stop chasing the approval of the crowd, you realize the crowd was always a hallucination. There are only ever a handful of faces that matter. Maybe three. Maybe four. If you are lucky, five. You mistake it for depression

You wake up. The coffee takes a little longer to kick in. You scroll your phone, not for news, but for obituaries. Not literally, at first. But figuratively. You check on the ones who are still here, and you take a silent inventory of the ones who are not.

And yes. All of that is real. But the deepest purpose of this decade is simpler: