FRACTURE

No Looking Back

My childhood wasn’t anything extraordinary—so ordinary, in fact, that writing it down can feel like an insult to the page. Still, everyone has a story worth telling. Mine may not begin like a movie, with a dramatic voiceover and dazzling visuals, but it’s still my childhood.

But sometimes I wonder—if I had the chance to step outside my own timeline, would I even want to go back at all?

If time machines were real, would you go to the past or the future? Would you return to your childhood? Would you relive those lovely moments with your half-broken toys? Would you wake up each morning with only one plan—to run around and laugh with your buddies? Would you…?

You probably would—but I wouldn’t. Even if you handed me the best time machine, completely free, for my entire life, I still wouldn’t step into it. I respect that my childhood helped shape who I am—but when I look back now, I just hate it.

That doesn’t mean I’d go to the future, either. No… I wouldn’t. I think seeing the future—before you’ve even lived it—ruins what human life is supposed to mean.

We can die at any time, and we know that for sure. Yet we still ignore death every single day and move on as if it’ll never come. We keep living—strengthening our skills, sharpening our dreams, working day and night, restless, just to reach our goals. But those goals often sit so far ahead that death may never let us touch them. And still, death lets some of us slip past it and accomplish what we chase—before it finally devours us into its darkness.

If a time machine could already show us the ending before we even begin, then what exactly are we fighting for in the first place?

Memories — 2