The Cardinal Review Vol. 2 Nostalgia

12:00 AM (Inspired by “2:00 AM”)

By Dylan K. (2024) It’s 12 AM and everyone in my home is in a deep slumber. It’s 12 AM and I’m supposed to be fast asleep. I guess I’m a little slow at that.

It’s 12 AM and I’m watching TikToks in an abysmal manner waiting for the clock to tick-tock all the way to 1 AM. But for now, I watch TikTok’s real short videos! To pass the time. Each video is 1 minute long, exactly what I need to pass the hour. I am on my 7th one. It has felt like more than that. It has felt like thousands. A routine does that to you. Watch. Scroll. Watch. Scroll. Soon it becomes Scroll. Scroll.

Scroll. Scroll. With no Watch. And no realization of time. One video says, “Stop scrolling!” And I scroll away. I glance at my watch, the only thing I seem capable of watching. It is 12:21. I continue scrolling, this time to sate my need for boredom, for a never-ending means to a figurative ends. Is this what getting lost is? Moving to go nowhere?

Efforts for nothing? Certainly, I am not lost.

I decide to move away to another app because one can only listen to the tik tok of their own bomb of undoing for so long. I move to Instagram, the anti-TikTok. And I’ve been bamboozled. It’s the same.

Watch. Scroll. Watch. Scroll. Once again, I stop watching, and I only scroll. They say big brother is watching, but if that is true, then is he scrolling? How can he keep watching if he is not scrolling? I look up at the ceiling and continue scrolling. I need to stop. I need to stop. I must sleep. I must sleep. I look at my watch. 12:47. I look back at the ceiling, at my lights. The two bulbs look like eyes peering down. In my current state of delirious fatigue, I wonder, “is that Big Brother?” I shake my head. “I don’t have a brother,” I whisper in my ear.

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