---
People always talk about turning eighteen like it's this magical doorway. You walk through and you're an adult. You get freedom, choice, control.
But they never warn you about nineteen.
No one talks about the year after. The limbo. The blur.
That's when everything started unraveling.
At first, it was little things.
I'd wake up with no memory of the dreams I just had—but I'd be sweating. My hands would shake. My heart would race like it had been running laps in another world.
I started forgetting where I put things. A book. My keys. My wallet. Then entire days slipped past me like water. I'd look up and the sun would be gone. I'd check my phone and find messages I didn't remember sending.
People started looking at me differently.
The mailman asked me if I was new to the building. I'd lived there for two years.
Jamie's cousin saw me in a café and asked how I'd been since moving. I hadn't moved.
Even Mikey, who I still saw the most, started to flinch when I said his name, like it triggered something in him—something he didn't want to remember.
---
The world got foggy. And I don't mean metaphorically.
I mean literally.
Streetlights felt dimmer. Colors faded. I'd stare at stop signs and swear they weren't red anymore, more like a tired brown. Sounds started muting themselves—conversations, car horns, even birdsong. All of it distant, like I was hearing life through a screen.
I started writing things down. Just to prove I existed. Just to leave a mark.
"Today is Thursday. My name is Rhysho."
"Jamie exists. Jayden existed. Mikey still sees me."
But the next morning, the notes would be gone. Not ripped up. Not crossed out.
Just… gone.
Like they were never written.
Like the page refused to carry proof of me.
---
And that's when I really started to panic.
Because I wasn't just forgetting.
I was being forgotten.
Not in the sad, nostalgic way.
In the cosmic way. Like my thread in the fabric of reality was unraveling one pull at a time.
I'd open my phone's gallery and see new photos—ones I didn't take. Me at places I didn't go. My face smiling at events I didn't remember attending.
I started dreaming of places that felt more real than waking life. Places with smooth black walls. Endless halls. Doors that opened to nothing but humming static.
And always… that feeling.
That something was watching me from behind the veil.
---
After nineteen, the blur swallowed everything.
My past became slippery.
My future started folding in on itself.
I don't know how to stop it.
And worse—I don't know if I'm supposed to.
---
[CONTINUES...]