DIARY
PRETEND AND ROLL THE DICE
Von Vera Vuskovic
Roll the dice.
Watch it wobble, feel it teeter. Can you stop it? Try, if you dare. Or don’t. It’s up to you, after all.
Stream of thoughts number 1: 13.2, 12:59 am.
We would have been epic. We could have been. It slipped away. We only see them once they have passed, don’t we? Those missed opportunities. I have often wondered about it, often written about it, in my diary, in my dreams. I have built a life that isn’t real, never was, but it feels real. I close my eyes, I can see it. Us. I twist illusions into memories so real I am certain I lived them.
Make up for lost time.
Twist your words. Believe them. Forget them. Push them down, down, down. The mind offers so many possibilities.They are vast. Infinite. And I control them all.
Dear sister, I think about the versions of us that could have existed. Versions untouched by fear, by pride, by all these moments where we chose silence over truth.Trust me on this, dear reader. The little things add up. The more I push them down, the stronger they boil, try to escape the dark pit I don’t want to acknowledge exists. No control. I can hear them whispering, lingering in the air around me, those words we never said, those sparks of hidden resentment, building up up up until the sparks turn into a flame, the flame into a fire.
Resentment turns into hate.
I used to laugh at those wanting to be immortal, couldn’t understand why they would ever want to stay the same. Used to think it was a silly, silly wish.
It’s a wish driven by fear. People are so, so afraid of the idea of change. The idea of losing something you had. The idea, that nothing lasts. Of time just spilling through your fingers, like a fist closing around sand, trickling through the cracks, more and more and more until nothing is left, and you try and try and try, try so hard to work against gravity. But you’ll give in, eventually. You have to. You can’t stop it. Accept your fate, they say.
Forever is a long, long time. But most importantly, it never ends.
I remember us. We were oh, so beautiful. So pure. We were children. When did we grow up? How could we forget all those times we built snowmen together, closing ourselves in a room, diving into worlds that were entirely our own? Knights, pirates, princesses and their white horses, girls slaying dragons, we did it all. All those different lives we dreamt of having, all those different people we dreamt of being.
We had it all.
Now we’re two strangers, living under the same roof. Quiet. So quiet.
Stream of thoughts 2:
18.6, 2.37 am
It’s been days. I lie awake at night. I can’t sleep. When I do, I wake up, bathed in sweat. I hate it. I’m out of control. And I spiral, downward once again.
Stream of thoughts 3:
7.9, 5:03 am
Figurines on a chess board.
Am I the author of my own narrative? Every second, a path appears. A bend in the story I never take.
I wonder, did Juliette know she was destined to fall in love with Romeo, that her love would write the final line? Did she believe the ending was hers to make, or did she sense the pen trembling in Shakespeare’s hand, guiding her every heartbeat?
Perhaps she only danced because he let the music spill into her story, her feet moving to a tune she could never silence.
Are we all pawns in this game that is life, doomed to an endless cycle of choices that are not really ours, following a script we never agreed to?
Every “what if” feels like a move, each choice feels like a gamble dressed as freedom. We call it agency, but maybe it’s only the illusion of strategy, our hands trembling over pieces already set in place.
The hands have been dealt. The dice have been rolled. The roulette wheel is spinning. So, go ahead, cross your fingers.
Pretend.
Vera Vuskovic ist Schülerin der Klasse 4i und Teil der Redaktion LGazette (SJ 25/26).
