I could put it into specifics by describing your toothpaste. No matter how recently you had bought it, that sorry tube was always a mangled mess. Twisted, creased, folded plastic or whatever it was, topped with a messy, half-open, broken-hinged, ineffective cap. Slathered with the blue-and-white residue of rushed mornings and tired nights. Exhausted. Does toothpaste try? It gets the job done, sure. But you probably waste half the toothpaste by destroying the tube like that.

You were like this with many things. Exhausted, a little bit crumpled and always partially wasted. Like toothpaste, I know you were always trying, and you nearly always succeeded at whatever you were doing, you were just often left with something not finished to your own standards. Dissatisfied with your own success. As I'm sure toothpaste is when you have a fine smile but still end up needing a filling again. Toothpaste does a good job, you must understand. We are just sometimes careless, and we sometimes don't have the time we need. We all still end up needing to schedule a dentist's appointment once in awhile.

Nobody likes the dentist. They’re bound to be good people, dentists, but I’ve never met anyone that doesn’t dread the dentist’s throne. Really, we’re supposed to avoid them - the whole goal is to never have reason to see the dentist, right? But we always do. For a regular check-up at least, if we can remember to book the appointment, as much as we may want to get out of it. Something that should be so easy to get out of, had you just brushed your teeth right all the time. So toothpaste is never as effective as you want it to be. But maybe that’s what makes it so satisfying - squeezing the life out of that tube, you can feel like you have power over the inevitable. That’s what you wanted.