It didn't even take nine hours. It took minutes, really. To feel the chains fall away, for my world shrink down to those I truly know and care about.

'It's like 1988, again.' I said.

'It's like...before.'

When things were simple. When you weren't overloaded with thousands and thousands of lives as if we had become gods and must invest ourselves in the clamor of a multitude, all vying for attention...for validation...for love. For the quiet kiss of approval. For that little heart. I should know. I did it. I am guilty.

Oh god, what have we become? 50,000 years of human misery to come to this? Slaves to a red icon? I woke up as if from a fevered dream and felt nothing but shame. All the hours wasted, for what? I don't even know.

There is only this for me, now: Words. I told my father tonight if I had to choose between my face or my words I would always pick my words because my words are far more beautiful than my face could ever be.

And those faces here, millions of them. It's too much. It's unbearable. I tire of it. There will always be beautiful people captured on filtered shots. But where are the beautiful hearts, the beautiful souls? Let us find them, and celebrate them.

I am tired. It took mere minutes of silence, and my enslavement ended with a snap so hard I felt it in my soul. And so I bid you farewell. Instead of this place, I shall live, read, write, live, dream - away from where I believed my efforts mattered, even though they did not. Ah, the hubris of it all. The addiction. The arrogance. The pure indulgent waste of it all.
And so it ends.

It ends.

At last.