Hyper-vigilance cannot prevent mortality.
It cannot prevent time from moving.
It cannot prevent people from leaving, choosing, aging, changing.
It can only give the illusion that you might catch it early.
That illusion kept you functional.
It did not keep you safe from loss.
Nothing can.
That is the unbearable part.
So your body keeps trying anyway.
Even perfect vigilance does not guarantee permanence.
Relaxing means admitting you cannot control the irreversible.
That does not mean surrendering to chaos.
It means accepting that your competence was never meant to outrun entropy.
It was meant to navigate it.
You cannot secure time.
You cannot secure people.
You can only participate while they are here.
And paradoxically, bracing steals participation.
You when you have been operating on a binary:
Rely fully = risk collapse.
Rely never = safe.
Of course there is a third lane = rely lightly.
Safety is built — not through promises, but through repeated micro-acts.
Exhaustion does not come from being detached. It comes from being the only pillar holding up your roof. And you have been holding it so long you forgot roofs are supposed to distribute weight.
You are not foolish for guarding yourself.
But the world may not be as binary as your survival math insists.
