I always leave things unfinished

Tan
2 min readMay 26, 2024

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Art by Howard Tangye

I am plagued by the relentless curse of unfinishedness, a specter that haunts every endeavor I undertake. From the depths of my murky childhood, this trait has clung to me like a shadow, darkening every path I tread. My projects, like ships lost at sea, drift aimlessly toward oblivion, their endings dangling precariously off the edge of a yawning abyss.

Once, I would eagerly share my creations with friends, basking in their playful groans of anticipation for more. But the moment their eyes grazed upon my work, it felt tainted, spoiled by their gaze. The initial validation sapped away my motivation, leaving me stranded in a desolate wasteland of unfinished tales and unfulfilled promises.

There’s a quote that resonates with me, a bleak reflection of my fractured existence: “I am a mess of unfinished words, of half-strung sentences. I am an empty paragraph, a half-cleaned kitchen. I am an unfinished love song, a letter that was never sent.” I am a canvas, abandoned mid-stroke, waiting for a sculptor to mold me into something whole. A canvas longing for a painter to breathe life into my barren expanse.

I wait in vain for someone to take the pen from my trembling hand, to complete the words that I cannot finish. I yearn for companionship on the journey to the post office, to send my letter out into the world, to set it free from the confines of my fractured mind. I ache for someone to lend their voice to my unfinished song, to infuse it with the melody that eludes me. And above all, I wait for someone to stitch together the fragments of my shattered self, to complete the puzzle of my existence that remains so agonizingly incomplete.

I am a vessel adrift in a sea of unfinishedness, a prisoner of my own inertia, condemned to wander the barren landscape of my unfulfilled dreams.

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