jump in

If our lives were a film, you might picture a split screen: two figures, each framed by the pale glow of a phone, faces illuminated with the familiar, reassuring warmth of home. Our families look back at us, respective spouses and children, frozen in those tender moments meant to remind us of our responsibilities. But beneath that flickering light, something else stirs, unseen but felt, a quiet pull that neither of us dares to name.

We are both striving, desperately, to be virtuous, but the question remains: which is the more unbearable burden? To be the one who breaks the silence first, surrendering to weakness, allowing desire to rise above duty? Or to be the one who falters in response, drawn down not by their own will, but by the other’s collapse, swept into the tide of temptation? In the end, it scarcely matters, for both paths lead to the same place, a slow, inevitable drift away from what we know is right, and the bitter recognition that the fall is always wrong.

How difficult it is only underscores how inevitable it was that we should stop. We had drifted too far, unaware of the depth beneath us until the waves lapped perilously close to our lips. Now, here we stand, feet planted on dry land once more, safe, or so we tell ourselves. But why, then, does the sea still call to us? Why does it shimmer with such allure?