The Wall

Rough living presses down hard on the accelerator. Bad food, drugs, binge drinking, smoking to "relieve stress", and a lack of exercise race fast downhill a one-way street. The changes are too subtle for some to notice: a little puffy and misshapen at first, and then a few months of bad decisions have transformed a young woman from time stopping goddess to has-been wreck, forever and without chance for recovery.

The first bad choice has no noticeable effect. All temporary relations appear to remain the same, so one has no reason to consider that value is being quickly and senselessly destroyed. Perhaps they imagine being impervious to self-destruction? Was the warned harm overhyped? What does a lack of standards matter anyway? Or one more bad choice? Soon laziness becomes non-effort as a rule, and then preference for bad results becomes dominant. Hangers-on sense their coming opportunity and say nothing to arrest momentum that favors them, these good friends somewhere between enablers and self-interested drug dealers.

What spurred the filthiest desire just a few seasons ago now produces at most recollection of what she was and how that inspired a torrential desire she can no longer produce, but mostly her appearance provokes nothing at all. The fierce enchantment has been lost, replaced by the emptiness of seeing her without the powerful lures she once held. However long was her career as temptress and heart breaker, never again will anyone dream of having her affection.

There's no way to pursue when there's no interest, and no point to pretending. You would have once annexed countless nations against their will for a night of pillaging her treasures, and now she could not pay you enough for the bother.

All things live in transition; constancy is an illusion for the ignorant. We must chart our course away from what is quickly collapsing, toward the goals and essence we seek.