The face they make when you ask

Somewhere in the back of your head, a movie is playing. It's you, ten years out, still saying no. Still bracing at parties. Still counting days. No wonder today feels heavy. That movie stretches one hard afternoon across a whole decade. It's a forecast from someone who's never been there.

Sit across from someone ten years free and ask when they last even thought about it. Watch their face. They squint, like you asked for their old locker combination. They have to go looking for the answer. No tale of a long, bitter standoff. A lot of them shrug and say they forgot. Forgetting is the finish line nobody told you about.

They forgot because a brain keeps what it uses. Yours once pointed every coffee, every walk home, every hard phone call straight at a cigarette. Stop feeding those links and they stop standing guard. The cigarette directed that grim movie, because a scared customer never walks out. The real forecast is boredom, and that's the best news you'll hear all week.

Leave the decade with God. You hold the ten years, and I'll take today. He's carried heavier things than your tomorrow. Then go collect your real forecast. Find someone long free, a neighbor, an uncle, a friend's grandmother, and ask them the question. One day a beginner will ask you, and you'll have to squint.