Cancer
Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature. Life in this sense dwells within all ordinary people as much as the artist. But they do not see it because they are not trying to shed light on it.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained
The promises that have become hard to keep are often the ones your body made before your mind caught up to what you were agreeing to. You said yes in a moment when it felt right, when the person asking needed something and you had it to give. Now the logistics have changed, or the cost has become clearer, but something in you still remembers the original yes and why it mattered. The reckoning is not just with the promise but with the version of yourself who made it, and what you owe that person who still lives in your chest.