Neglect.

You neglect yourself – fail to cut your hair, trim your toenails, exercise, bathe – and maybe people won’t want to be around you. Maybe you don’t feel like you’re worth the care. Maybe you think that it’s your choice. It’s not. It’s failing to make a choice. It’s neglect. If you neglect your body, it won’t be very long before it’s a burden to be around you.

Neglect.

You neglect your children – not real neglect, just let them use the phone – and before long they won’t be able to live without it. They’ll find that the need they had for time with you is replaced quite nicely by the glowing square. They’ll find it quiets the anxiety of teenage years – at least when it’s not causing crushing anxiety – and helps them know all the ways that they’re inadequate so they can improve, improve, improve until they’re perfect like that one person on Insta. When they find perfection out of their reach, they’ll hate themselves, maybe kill themselves.

Neglect.

You neglect your relationship – having kids is hard, life is busy, we’re just too tired all the time – neglect your relationship, and act shocked when you start to drift. You’ll look up and see a roommate, see a nag, see a poisonous person who’s angry at you, and knows just which buttons to push. You’ll see someone who isn’t your soulmate, who isn’t right for you, who doesn’t understand you. You’ll see someone who you married too young, married when you really didn’t understand yourself, married when you didn’t know what you wanted out of life. You’ll see cords that bind. You’ll see a burden. Neglect. You’ll say “we drifted apart”, and you’ll act like it’s impossible to come together again. You’ll ignore the fact that frantic paddling would help you come back together, and you’ll just keep drifting.

Neglecting.

Maybe you neglect your mind. Maybe you’ve stopped pushing yourself, stopped learning, stopped dreaming. Maybe you think you’ve arrived, at that one place you thought would make you happy, or maybe you feel stuck. Maybe you feel like hitting everyone if you think about your dreams, so you just learn to filter them out. Resentment. You neglect your hopes, and you’ll resent those things you see as obstacles. If only I didn’t have kids. If only I’d married someone else. If only my parents left me money. If only I’d gone to the right school. If only I was younger/older/more experienced/more energetic. You neglect your mind, your dreams, your thoughts, and you run on default, playing out whatever destructive story your parents did, playing out whatever destructive story you saw on television, reacting impulsively, not thinking, not choosing.

Just…not choosing.

Neglect can be numbing, nicely numbing. You can get in a habit of just…not…thinking…about…it…

…

One day you wake up, and a cold bucket of water is dumped over your head. You’re at risk of a heart attack. She wants a divorce. Your kids hate you. Maybe you fell like you did nothing deserve these things.

“I didn’t do anything!” “I didn’t do anything!”

You didn’t do anything.

Neglect.

It will kill you. It will destroy any relationship you ever have. It will ruin your career, estrange and destroy your children.

It’s a poison, a powerful poison that must be fought against. If you don’t fight neglect, it will eat you.

Rise, find what inspires you, dream again, work hard at what matters. Don’t concern yourself with the outside world – wash your dishes first. Air out the house. You’ll find a well of energy you didn’t know was there.

Diligent work fights back against entropy, against the inevitable decline of everything.

Slay the dragon before it comes for your village, or it will eat everything you’ve ever loved.

Then it will eat you.

Neglect.