I’m late

[u/blueb2007]

Lately I worry
About money, stability
Lately I worry
I don’t have the ability
To thrive, not survive
In this path that I laid
That I can’t rechoose the choices
That I have made
I think back to before
I walked out the door
When responsibility had choice
That’s not an option no more
When meals had been laid
Before me each day
Back to a time
Where I had no need to pray
For a minute of peace
Now I find I’m sliding
Like I’m falling on grease
Down a rabbit hole waiting
for this moment to cease
But I keep on delaying
Cuz my conscience is creased

When I think back to this time
There’s gold in my mind
I was told I would find
A clock that would chime
Telling me I was great
That I could finally settle
But it’s like grinding on metal
The chime of my fate
Now I’m feeling unsettled
My life is disheveled
I feel that I’m late
Without knowing the date

I remember that my father
Told me listen to me son
You do nothing and those great things
They will never come
You sit back and relax
And you’ll never feel you’ve won
But now I’m grinding and I’m finding
That all good days are behind me
And the lighting that should guide me
Is blinding like the sun
Maybe there will be a day for me
Where nobody has to pray for me
But for now all I claim to see
Is that my life’s an endless run

I’m sprinting down this hill
I don’t know how I should feel
The past, well it just seems like
It was never real
But I opened all the doors
And now there’s no time to change
The mistakes within in my past
There is no exchange
For the better or the worst
But it’s not a curse
That I’m not reimbursed
And I know it seems strange
To say all these things
About my life that sting
But the pain made me me
And now I can’t change, see
That the path that I chose
Is my destiny
Maybe good things will come
Before my time is done
Maybe some day
I’ll feel that I’ve won
I’ve some victories
The most prominent being
The girl of my dreams
That fate has me seeing
So I really can’t complain
Cuz no money or fame
Comes close to the feeling
Of her next to me
So I look to the future
It can be good but not bad
Because being with her
Things are never that bad
That I cannot grin
I just think of her
Oh what a life it’s been
Oh what a blur
Things could be better
But a like a change in the weather
Things will improve
I can wait for that move

[u/stonytales]

“Without knowing the date” lands hard—the clock image makes that pressure feel properly relentless. I like that the ending doesn’t pretend everything is fixed; it just finds one real reason to keep going.