The Expiration Date of Everything

It has been a while since I wrote something reflective, something that asks more questions than it answers. And on this penultimate stretch of the year, I find myself returning to the familiar terrain of loss, accountability, and the quiet logic of human behaviour.

Loss, I’ve learned, rarely arrives in a single form. It isn’t confined to the absence of a loved one or the ending of relationships. Sometimes loss is the slow erosion of things once assumed—certainty, stability, the version of ourselves we thought would last longer.

There was a time when I believed that careful tending—attention, respect, consistency—would keep people present. That if we valued them sincerely, they would choose to stay with the same intention. That belief felt safe then.

But at twenty-five, impermanence feels less like a threat and more like a principle. People, circumstances, affections—all carry their own expiration dates. And understanding this has given me a steadier footing than certainty ever did.

Acceptance doesn’t demand indifference. It simply asks for awareness. It reminds me that even transient presences contribute to who we become, and that our responses often matter more than the events themselves.

Yet what complicates this understanding is the variance in how others navigate life. Not everyone recognises the weight of their choices. Some speak in ideals they never embody, as if clarity applies only to others.

And here lies one of the quieter betrayals of human nature—the way some people negotiate power so selectively. I began to notice how responsibility was something men invoked only when convenient, how helplessness became his shield in certain rooms but his weapon in others. 

The imbalance was never spoken aloud, yet it was unmistakable: the rules he claimed not to manage elsewhere somehow became rigid expectations when directed toward us. It was a strange choreography of softness and force, exercised not by principle but by preference—revealing far more about his character than any confession ever could.

There were moments when he twisted the narrative so violently it nearly collapsed under its own hypocrisy—insisting she “wouldn’t have acted that way if we hadn’t provoked her,” as if we were the architects of a disaster he authored long before anyone else entered the frame. The arrogance was almost operatic. He spoke of her as though she were some trembling innocent, when the truth was far less delicate: she stepped into the wreckage with full consciousness, fully aware of the ruins she was helping him extend. 

And together they performed this grotesque duet of self-absolution, recasting themselves as casualties while painting us as the antagonist. It was repulsive to witness—this story they crafted where we somehow became the storm, while the two of them, hand in hand, pretended they hadn’t been dancing in the lightning long before we ever knew a storm existed. What they needed was a villain to distract from the fact that the rot was theirs, the origin was his, and the choice was hers. And so they rewrote the script, hoping elegance could disguise decay, hoping poetry could mask the stench. But it couldn’t. Not even close.

I have tried explaining million trillion times that conflicts rarely begin with blame. They begin with unspoken needs and habits, inherited patterns, and unexamined hurts. But understanding requires willingness, and willingness is unevenly distributed.

Observing these contradictions has become a quiet study of its own. Words and actions often move in opposite directions. Principles bend. Accountability becomes optional, depending on convenience. Well, I am not exempt from imperfection. I have made choices I later questioned. But reflection remains my compass. Integrity, to me, is not about being flawless—it is about staying aware of the impact of my steps.

Some people, however, hold no such compass. They justify harm as necessity, disguise self-interest as wisdom, and seek validation for actions that fracture more than they build. This disparity brings its own sense of imbalance. The world often rewards bold disregard more quickly than quiet accountability. And watching that unfold can feel like witnessing the rules rewrite themselves.

It is not as if I am blind to the roots of their choices; I see the sorrow stitched beneath their impulses, and a part of me even feels a quiet pity for the misery they once survived. Yet somehow that history never softened them, never taught them empathy—it merely reshaped them into the villain they once cried about and claimed to escape.

Yet anger, however justified, offers little direction. It burns quickly but does not illuminate anything new. It is clarity—measured and intentional—that moves us forward. However, reflection also demands honesty with oneself. When I was twenty, I wrote a simple line: “Don’t pain others if you don’t want to be pained.” It was naïve in its simplicity, but truer now than I realized then. Because sometimes the real question isn’t “why are they reacting like this toward me?” But “did something in my choices wound them first?”

It’s remarkable how people often center only their own convenience—how they cannot be happy for us, how they judge, how they turn vile—without ever asking: What prompted this? Did I take something that wasn’t mine? Did I step on a boundary I never acknowledged? The refusal to look inward can be astonishing.

And the irony is sharp: the same people who accuse us of “reacting badly” often mirror the very excuse they use. It’s almost poetic—how I can take someone’s exact words, hand them back, and ask them to face the symmetry they tried to ignore. Reflection, after all, is a two-way mirror.

What a twisted comedy it is: the ones who shattered us now expect softness, expect understanding, expect halos—while they drift unbothered, causing someone’s death in the way only the truly oblivious can, leaving behind not corpses but people who no longer recognise their own pulse.

It felt, at times, like watching a murderer recoil at the mere act of being called what he is. As though the title were more offensive than the crime itself. He spiraled, not from remorse, but from rage that anyone still alive dared to remember the truth. 

And the strangest part—the part that revealed him completely—was how he always vowed to “take the blame,” to “keep the reasons to himself,” to “carry the weight alone,” only to become the very first person to twist the story for sympathy, whispering his justifications into the ears of anyone willing to listen. 

He moved through his circle like a ghost desperate for absolution, painting himself as tragic, misunderstood, heroic even—anything but the architect of the wound. It was absolutely disgusting to witness: a man who committed the damage performing grief not for the life he ruined, but for the burden of being recognised as the one who mastermind it.

Sorrow becomes a quiet teacher. It reveals where integrity matters, where silence is no longer weapon, and where my responsibility to myself begins and ends. And so, on this chapter of reflection, I make a simple commitment: to guard my principles with steadiness, to respond with intention, and to refuse to let the carelessness of others dictate my direction.

Inequity is inevitable, but it does not decide our character. Our interior architecture—our choices, our clarity, our restraint—builds over time, one deliberate thought at a time. In moving on, I find more than distance. I find definition. Betrayal clarifies who I am not. Loss clarifies what I value. And reflection clarifies what I refuse to carry into the next chapter.

Ultimately, the pursuit of integrity is not about moral superiority but about grounded resilience. And on this penultimate edge of the year, I choose to navigate forward with composure, discernment, and a self-respect that does not expire.