"You've taken everything"

I looked at myself as I said this, my reflection shining back my face. My empty face.

"Everything..."

I don't know why I was blaming myself... in a sense, I blamed the world. In a sense, it was both parts equally their fault as it was my own.

All I knew was that things around me were changing. And all I could do was try to adapt. But it was so hard to, so very hard in truth.

So who was I to blame? In the end, it was just myself... myself because I was the one losing grip of the world. The world had already lost me so very easily in my arrogance and pride. Not wanting things to change but the change was inevitable. The river of time never stops but with progress in any area of life, came the redundancy. Came the sad knowledge that I myself was becoming redundant.

All my hopes and dreams, what I had trained myself for, for so many years... in the end, that would be my downfall.

Because I wasn't adapting, at least not fast enough... my way of life becoming ancient now to the newer people. The young people... gosh, was I the one becoming the dinosaur now?

"YOU," I said to my reflection harshly, seeing near tears swell around the corners of my eyes, "YOU are the one who NEEDS to CHANGE."

I knew that so truly, yet when I looked at myself, only tears ran down the cheeks of a failure of a human.

"I will..." My reflection whispered back to me in tears, and I only glared at those upset eyes, closing my own then and whispering to myself, "I will..."

Because no one likes it when their purpose is gone... not even me... not even the person inside of me that whispers in my soul, "You will carry on still..."

But melancholic nostalgia always clouds up the present when the future is unknown.

Thinking things were better then.

But the memories still played like a hidden movie in the back of my mind... of a happier time when it seemed everything was going right.

The hidden memory where I stood at that same mirror and said to it in angry cruel and hurtful words.

"YOU need to change."

"YOU,"

How so much of the past has been locked away in the mind... that I could stand there presently at that same mirror of self-loathing and not remember how I'd been there time and time again.

Because the reality of now often forgot about what had been... and with one simple word can explain all that we hate and all that we can't control.

Change.

Change...

How things had changed and in the end... how they had somehow stayed the same.

Everything coming down to me... and to the you I blamed.

"I can't change," I whispered once more and my reflection only said back to me with a sad smile.

"You already have..."

The fight over as my reflection said to me with tears, "And they, the world, has too."