[ WP ] On your 60th birthday you find yourself on your death bed . In your last moments , 5 visitors enter the room . The visitors are the personification your past selves from age 10 to 50 . Instead of your life flashing before your eyes , they 've come to reflect on your life .

I watch myself enter the room. The man who entered is markedly different to the man I am now. Flesh clings to him that has long slipped of me, and though he has bags under his eyes, his are as light as feathers compared to mine. He looks at me with pity, and I ca n't help but envy him. To think how bitter I was for so little - witnessing an ageing face in the mirror, growing fat and tired, and desperately, desperately trying to deny it. All his pretence and effort to be young again drains him and only ages him faster. Here is a man who does not yet know how much weight he will lose, how much more tired he can become. 
 
 He looks at me, and he can read my thoughts. He looks guilty, because he did not feel grateful for the little things, and instead became cantankerous and petty, miserly and miserable; now the big thing stares back at him and shames him. 
 
 My envy dissolves. How can I blame a caged bird for refusing to sing? Even if the cage was of my own design. 
 
 I forgive him. 
 
 -- 
 
 I watch myself enter the room. Another self enters, a little faster on his feet, the skin on his face a little tighter. Thinner than the older one, though still far from the ragged thing I have become. His face is draped with sadness, a sadness that was there before he even entered the room, and only deepened and darkened on seeing me. Here is a man who can walks blindly into the future while staring backwards with tearful eyes. Regrets have sunk deep into his bones, and will, with time, become rotten and bitter. 
 
 I feel sorry for him, but not nearly as much as he feels sorry for himself. He lives every day like an apology. He is building the cage he feels he deserves. He ca n't forgive himself. He looks at me with despairing eyes. 
 
 I forgive him. 
 
 -- 
 
 I watch myself enter the room. This man is younger still, with a full head of hair, and a confident swagger. He is holding a phone, and is distracting himself with it so as not to look at me. I can see what he ca n't; suits and cars and watches ca n't hide the gap inside him from me. He barely glances at me or the others, and when he does he sniffs disdainfully. I feel his pain. I know that if he were to look at me properly, he would crumble completely. 
 
 I stare at him, though I know he ca n't bear to meet my gaze for more than a second. But when he does, I see all his wounds that he hides from the world. He pours alcohol over them secretly, to sting himself and disinfect. They fester anyway. He is sowing the seed of his own collapse, but he ca n't see that yet. He turns back to his phone, desperately trying to ignore his feelings. My heart breaks for him. 
 
 I forgive him. 
 
 -- 
 
 I watch myself enter the room. A young man enters the room, almost unrecognisable to me. His face rapidly cycles through emotions on seeing me. His default face wass sullen, sulky. It lights up into a half smile which, incomplete, morphs into an intense distress, his eyebrows knitting together. I can see tears in his eyes already. What an emotional boy. Here is a boy who sometimes wants to run away from the world and sometimes wants to rule it. He feels trapped in a powerless body - his ambitions are too large to fit. His world is riven with contradiction and he ca n't understand why. He does n't yet understand why on some days he can fly above the world like a bird, and others he ca n't even leave his bedroom. 
 
 I watch him look at me with love and hate. He denies me in a way that I ca n't help but admire. How could someone as strong as him succumb to this? His glare is accusatory. *He's* disspointed in *me*! He's so full of youth, of fire and flame that I can feel the heat radiate off him. I laugh to myself, and he breaks into a smile. 
 
 I forgive him. 
 
 -- 
 
 I watch myself enter the room. A young boy enters the room. He breaks into a smile when he sees me, and runs over to hold my hand. I recognise that smile, and feel the same bloom across my own face. He looks into my eyes and I into his. He's amazed by me, and I am humbled by the light in his eyes. 
 
 There is nothing to forgive. I ask him silently to forgive me. His eyes seem to answer: *there is nothing to forgive*. 
 
 He kisses me on the forehead.
