When I Was Young

Once, when I was young and immortal, I was cruel and immoral. I walked an endless highway. I was infatuated with what I was capable of doing. It did not bother me to see someone with tears. Well, it didn't bother me much.
When I was green, I laughed more of the time and saw humor in misfortune because I did not know enough to realize one day misfortune would visit me.
When I erred I denied it. When I succeeded, I gloated. I became bloated with my own complacency. I carried the laurel wreath long after it had dried and withered and revisited my past glory as if it were something fresh and new. I fully expected those around me awaited something from me which was fresh and new and I tried to pass off the stale remnants as such. No one ever accused me of begging for compliments, though if they had, it might have awakened me.
Once, when I was sleeping safely in the past, my tomorrows lacked the urgency I feel in them today.
When tomorrows were countless, I thought I would always have my friends and that I would have acquaintances for almost as long. Now the future feels like a finite possibility and probability lessens. There are days I walk alone.
When the days began to grow shorter, my attention was drawn to jesting matters. I played a waiting game, for there was no necessity to rush to checkmate. There were options aplenty and if none appealed there was the option to create more, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will, but self-fulfillment is a well bound to run dry. The days grew shorter and now I feel the loss of hours, not merely moments. The scales measuring the past against the future have been tipped in favor of the former.
Once, when I did not state these inevitabilities, I believed they could be staved. Now, no longer young, I walk the road I paved.