Your old self would call you a liar

Seat the old you across the table and walk them through yesterday. Plain facts, flat as a grocery list. When you woke up. What you did first. Where you went. How the evening ended. No highlights, no milestones. Then watch their eyebrows climb.

You know which parts would get them. A first hour with nothing in it. A trip across town without planning where you'd smoke. A long afternoon without a single negotiation. They'd call you a liar, kindly, the way you'd laugh off a fairy tale. Every day, a cigarette told that person this kind of day was out of reach. For you, it was yesterday.

You can argue with a counter. You can call a good stretch luck, or fragile, or one bad night from ruined. You can't argue with that face. The day you described wasn't hard for them. It was unavailable. That gap isn't mood. It's the distance between two different people.

Before they go, tell them one thing. It wasn't more willpower. You became someone else. They won't buy that either. Let them keep it. Then speak to God for both of you. You heard me when I couldn't ask. Yesterday was the answer. Today's another one.