but

it was hard to say exactly when things stopped making sense. probably because no such point in time existed; it wasn't so that one moment everything was fine and the next not. instead things just slid into obscurity, slowly turned into something intolerable, and when you're being drip fed in such a manner it is very difficult, if not impossible, to say when you've had enough.

but if J would have had to name a single thing that he pinned it down to, the one symptom that told him that things had became terminally ill, it was the introduction of but.

that's great, but i don't want to go there.

of course i would do it, but i'm busy.

i love you, but you are just so annoying sometimes.

i love you, but.

but.

there didn't use to be a but; there was no need for it. until there suddenly was, and slowly it was everywhere; little by little everything had a but attached to it. J hadn't thought it to be possible to hate a word as much as he hated but, that a simple combination of letters could raise such anger in him until it did; and even if he knew that it was not the word itself that brought the emotion as much as the meaning it carried, he could not help himself from detesting it from the bottom of his heart.

and in the end it was difficult to tell whether the final reason was the but and what it meant or the very word itself; or perhaps they were the one and the same thing. in the end it made no difference as the result was the same; one way or another, it was the but that killed everything.