The Final Blame

Time is the most efficient killer—not because he’s quick, but because he’s subtle. He doesn’t announce his presence, doesn’t come crashing in with noise or fury. He doesn’t need to. He works in silence, in the background, slipping through the cracks of your days. While you’re busy living, he’s already begun the process of taking. You don’t notice it at first. A laugh you don’t hear anymore, a place you don’t go, a person who stops calling. Slowly, without warning, things begin to disappear—opportunities, youth, people you love, pieces of yourself.

That’s his trick. He doesn’t take everything at once. He’s patient. He leaves just enough behind for you to not feel the absence. He replaces presence with memory, and memory with ache. He lets you remember how it used to be so that the contrast stings sharper. And he’s cruel in that he gives you no control. You can’t bargain with him, can’t plead for more time. He won’t stop. He won’t slow down. He won’t even look back.

But perhaps his most devastating move is in the end, when you finally notice him. When you’re staring at everything you’ve lost—opportunities you didn’t seize, words you didn’t say, moments you let pass by—you realize he didn’t do it all at once. He did it while you were distracted, thinking you had forever. And when you’re there, aching, broken, wondering how it all slipped away, he whispers the final blow: it wasn’t his fault. It was yours. Because he was always there, but you didn’t make the most of him.