Paul's poem begins with a stutter. "i try to be / be me" repeats its own verb, as if the speaker can't get the sentence started. The goal sounds simple, to be "me, myself and no one else", but the next line makes it impossible: "the best version of myself, that there ever can and will be." That superlative is a trap. Anyone measured against the best version that "ever can and will be" is bound to fall short, and the poem shows what happens next.
The turn comes quickly. "there's moments / moments in which i feel as though i am in control / but i am not." The speaker's grip on the situation lasts exactly one line break. The later phrase "i never was and never will be in control" echoes the opening "can and will be", but with the hope drained out of it. The first line promised a future self, and the later line takes that future away. The speaker also splits in two. "i" is no longer in charge: "it's my mind, that's in control." The mind becomes an "it", a separate and hostile presence. Later the speaker questions "whether it deserves its place on earth", as though it were a tenant who should be evicted.
The form suits this. There is no rhyme and no regular meter, and everything is lowercase, so the voice sounds like thinking aloud at night rather than like composed verse. Line lengths swing between short fragments ("there's moments") and long, breathless lines that keep adding clauses. Punctuation is sparse and odd. Commas fall where a speaker might pause for breath, and no line ends with a full stop, so nothing ever feels finished. The structure also loops. "i hate myself a bit more for hating myself" is a sentence that bites its own tail, and the casual "a bit more" is chilling because it sounds so matter-of-fact. The self-hatred has become routine.
The poem then turns outward, and the pronouns are telling. "her" and "them" have no names. "her" is someone who "sometimes needs me so desperately", while "them" might think the speaker is "a freak". One is a reason to stay, the other a judgment to fear, and both pull the speaker toward performing. So "i put on a smile everyday and joke about the most random things." The word "random" is quietly revealing: the jokes are not drawn from joy but picked up from anywhere, because the point is the mask, not the humor. "i do it all for others" sounds like generosity, but it reads as exhaustion.
The final movement is built on repetition. "i don't live because i want to be alive / i live because..." appears twice more, and each version goes deeper. The first reason is love, since "her" must be happy. The second is the unexpected one: "i live because i'm afraid that what they say is true / that someday it will all be better." Hope is usually the thing that keeps people going. Here it is something the speaker fears, perhaps because believing it and being let down would hurt more, or because it would mean the current pain was somehow avoidable. The poem doesn't explain, and the ambiguity is part of its honesty. "what they say" is also a quiet jab at the well-meaning reassurances that don't match what the speaker feels.
The last line, "even though it gets worse day by day", hangs off the sentence before it like an afterthought, and it brings back the title. "day by day" normally suggests slow progress, but here it measures decline. Ending on the title gives the line a flat finality, with no resolution offered.
What makes the poem significant is how plainly it describes a contradiction many readers may recognize: staying alive out of duty rather than desire, smiling as a form of care for others, and feeling even encouragement as a threat. It doesn't dramatize or decorate. Its power lies in that plainness. A reader who sees themselves in these lines should know that saying such things aloud to a trusted person is worth far more than hiding them behind a joke.