it wasn't that i was trying to find an answer, it was more like… trying to find the edge of the question itself, to feel around it and see if it even HAD an edge, or if it just bled out into everything else like dye in water. i swear i could feel the pressure behind my forehead change when i realized how arbitrary all the edges were. there's that thing @stardust_and_static does, where they dive into a single word until it loses all meaning, then gains a new one. it's like that, except with everything… i keep waiting for the catch, for the moment where the whole thing collapses in on itself and i'm back where i started, only emptier. but it hasn't happened yet. maybe it won't.