Chapter 0 - Half a life
Like a habit I clench and unclench my fist, noticing the needlessly large amount of muscles around my arms. It has become a ritual of sorts. Inwardly I await the day I return to my own body, one that is average but mine through and through. The strain from my shirt suffocating my arms with every slight movement only serves to taunt me. It laughs at me, tormenting me of my own inability to escape what has been forced upon me.
It feels as though just yesterday I was an average university student, merely doing my best to get through life. The mundane life of a student that everyone wishes to escape is now a dream that feels beyond my reach. On a day that was no different from usual, my life was turned upside down. Taking a break from revision, I was playing a random game. It wasn't even a noteworthy game that you would often hear about in a fancy plot. It was truly a shitty game, made with the most basic functions, for the sole purpose of wasting time. As with all such games, it was riddled with virus-inducing ads. This was also a mundane experience that I have somehow come to miss. There is no doubt that most people have dealt with this many times, and felt frustrated by the constant ads that get in the way of enjoying their pastime. I would be lying if I said I was any different. It wasn't until I misclicked and opened an ad that I realised how meaningless my entire life had been.
The laws of the universe no longer held any weight. Everything I knew was washing away before my eyes as if written on sand. The tide was coming in and that too quickly. As the ad began to open, my eyes were refusing to work as they should. Fuzziness infiltrated my sight and all my sense, as if the entire world had been swallowed by static. In pain I closed my eyes and just as abruptly as the pain came, it subsided. The moment I opened my eyes I knew it, I was fucked. Nothing around me gave me the comfort of familiarity, not even my own body. Stranger than the sight before me was the weight my body held, the uncomfortable tightness of my clothing, and the sudden change in my height. There is no better way to put it than feeling as though I was in someone else's body, which in hindsight I was and continue to be. Before panic came confusion. No answer was logical enough to soothe my pounding heart. My mind was swirling with questions that I have yet to answer but also did not have time to think about.
Only two weeks have passed since I found myself in this strange place but all questions remain unanswered. The uncertainty of it all, the feeling of everything I worked hard for vanishing into the static, the very air I was breathing gave me nothing but pain. The more I thought, the more I began to dwell in every negative thought my mind could conjur. So I did as anyone else would do, I didn't think. I have lived the past couple of weeks as less than human, more like a zombie. The only reason I could become somewhat accustomed to this new life was because I lived without thought.
People called me by a name I didn't recognise but that was okay because it didn't matter. I was at a school I knew nothing about, enrolled in classes I have no knowledge of outside of fictional stories I read in the past, but that didn't matter. I had a new group of friends and a family I had apparently known before I even really existed, but that didn't matter either. Nothing mattered. I only did as I felt compelled to do, nothing more and nothing less. If I had learned anything from the recent ordeal, it was that the world would shape you against your will. Irrespective of how hard you try, or what you do, you would end up right where you were supposed to be. The moment I realised this, I had lost all fight in me. The glimmer of hope I had to return to my world seeped away from me. It was a change so obvious that I could see my body begin to deflate. My shoulders hung down as if held by weights, my steps were rough with too little energy but too much force and my responses lacked life.
Everything around me was bustling with life. People were engaging animatedly which came as no surprise. If anything was out of place, it was me and only me. If others noticed this change from whoever I was supposed to be, I don't know. They all merely carried on as if everything was as it should be which only unsettled me further. I felt like a puppet on strings, swaying in whichever direction the wind blew, unable to plant my feet anywhere. Home was a word foreign to me, security even more far fetched. From deep within, my heart ached for a place I could call my own, the want so heavy it sank into every inch of my being. But if this world had taught me anything, it was that everything could be snatched away in an instant. There's no logic behind any event that occurs, even less for tragedy. It occurs when and where it does, not caring about whether one deserves it.
That is how I came to live half a life. One part of me continued to do what was expected of me, while another wandered aimlessly in a world that existed to no one but myself. I settled with living in the shadows of others, afraid of what being in the spotlight would bring. Sure I had friends, but I would not stand out when I was with them. I was almost a filler in this world and in my own life. Perhaps that is the way it should be. I would like to remain in this way, if the world should allow it.