An object at rest stays haunted

It is 1:43am, and I am reading about entropy again, and the universe is supposedly expanding in every direction at once. Yet, I have spent the better part of three years standing perfectly still, and the dying stars are scattering themselves across impossible distances, and I WANT TO ESCAPE MYSELF.

The asteroid does not ask permission of the vacuum. The photon does not grieve the sun that birthed it. Somewhere beyond the reach of ordinary sight, a black hole is swallowing entire histories, and I cannot even seem to swallow a single memory, and this is not how consciousness is supposed to feel, is it? IS IT?

I sat cross-legged beneath the window, watching Orion drag itself across the sky like an old prophecy. I think about the Ship of Theseus. I think about every cell that has died and every thought that has vanished and every version of me that should have disappeared with them. I have replaced every part. I have replaced every part. And thus spoke the comet: I SHOULD HAVE CHANGED BY NOW.

You know the rest. You know how the paradox goes. The self survives and survives and survives until survival itself becomes the prison. I keep waiting for some great rearrangement. I wait for the universe to make a clerical error and wake me up as someone lighter. Even light bends under sufficient pressure, and I have carried enough pressure to split worlds.