Unfulfillment 101

Anna looked at her reflection

in the black, blank screen of her phone,

wondering what became

of the girl she was before.

Before the grief over relationships

that met their demise,

people that faced their final curtain,

and the dreams of a young woman

with the world at her fingertips.

~

It had been many years since

she had really felt herself,

really felt she mattered in the world.

~

Sure, she had her family and close-knit group of friends,

but beyond the minutiae of their shared experiences,

she felt she no longer had anything in common

with anyone.

~

She no longer was the trailblazer

looking to set the world alight.

~

One word she had come to associate

with her existence

was malaise —

in so much as how she felt,

without really being able

to put her finger on the exact issue,

but knowing she was not what she ought to be.

~

Her life could be distilled

into a mere play-by-play prosaic pity party

from the moment she burst forth

from her mother’s embrace

to the harsh world beyond her hideaway.

~

That was when her fate was sealed,

it seemed to her at least,

~

as she sat looking at her phone,

doomscrolling her life — or what remained of it —

away, away, away.

~

It wasn’t that she had given up,

as much as given in.

~

She chose the path of least resistance.

~

“Anna, can you cover my shift, please?”

“Anna, why can’t you do that? It’s not like you have a life.”

~

She could reply, of course she could —

but then what?

~

“I want to sit at home and decompress,

or just depress.”

~

“My life is like Babylon:

non-existent, but it’s still my life.”

~

Humorous or heartbreaking, it’s a curious thing,

the way the language used,

the things we were taught and told

as children,

play in adult life.

~

Anna wondered if her mother had ever said those immortal words:

“You can be whatever you want, as long as you’re happy!”

~

She wondered if she would be in a different time and place right now,

allowing for some shifts in the course of history —

some displaced,

and even those disavowed by a cruel twist of fate,

unalived they say in the doom scroll.

~

She imagined alternative Anna.

Alt.Anna or Anna MK II, for short.

~

Imagined her goals and dreams —

did they still align?

~

Would Alt.Anna offer

a masterclass in despair,

grief,

loneliness,

disharmony of a hermit,

intrusive thoughts that gather

around her ankles and continue to pile,

one on the other, without fail,

till she’s drowning alive in them?

~

Perhaps Anna MK II would excel in spreadsheets,

and see her value

increase with every quarter.

~

Maybe, if she was born a little earlier in the grand scheme of things,

Alt.Anna from the past would have made an excellent chambermaid —

not queen.

Never queen.

Queens have targets on their backs; slaves don’t.

~

Alt.Anna the slave may have been born and raised in some

forgotten outpost of empire.

~

Alt.Anna the jazz club singer,

of fame and infamy,

a new flame every week,

would bring men and women down to their knees

with those trills

and falsetto la-ti-da.

~

Still Anna MK II, bless her —

bless her darkened heart and assassin’s eye

for targets.

~

Queens, dignitaries, factory workers, and spreadsheet savants

all pay the piper in the end,

when the piper is a slick, attractive

femme fatale with an arsenal of weapons,

but prefers the Glock for point-blank,

and rifle for the middle distance.

~

The middle distance is where Anna — our timeline Anna —

finds herself

as she wakes from her immersive and subversive,

prosaic daydream,

brimming with life,

but also the minutiae of the non-living —

not dead,

just the slow undoing

of life unlived.

~

Unfulfillment 101.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: This more experimental piece was first published on Medium through the Catharsis Chronicles publication on Auguest 9, 2025.. You can read the original piece at the link below.

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