Optimistic Youth, Jaded Age

Roll out a lifetime like a scroll It stretches but only so far And writing slowly fills the scroll From left to right And when the writing stops The story is over As a youth I thought it stretched to eternity That each night I closed my eyes I would awaken to a beautiful morning sun But nowadays I sometimes wonder If I've seen my last morning sun When life is so very fragile So many pages fill the scroll of my story With so many chapters I wish I could erase And I'm not honestly sure where I changed so much From the exuberant youth with a life to live To a jaded old man suffering his own thoughts Part of me would embrace the end of my story Millions of possibilities dwindled down to a few And the once huge supporting cast has become small And at least half the remaining cast resides in my mind So many conflicting voices telling me sweet lies But when you're adept at pushing people away Eventually you end up all alone With my lifetime rolled out before my eyes I'm not sure how close to the end I truly am For the scroll length is but a red herring And the words could stop at any second But if I know one thing from my story I was an optimistic youth who jaded with age Roll out a lifetime like a scroll It stretches but only so far And writing slowly fills the scroll From left to right And when the writing stops My story is over