Chapter 1

My nose is dry. As I breathe in fresh air, it creates a slight burning sensation. When I close my eyes, they burn too. It's likely from a lack of sleep. Some people will talk about depriving themselves of sleep as an object of interest, but in my case, it's just how it is. I don't want you to get the wrong impression of me. That's how I feel. 

My ID clicks against the reader, letting me in. As I'm climbing the four flights of stairs to my room, it feels like the final hours of my life. Every step is labored. I'm barely conscious of how my body feels, yet like a machination, my body is taking each step forward, moved by an unseen force. My limbs are moving out of sync with my brain, as though they belong to a stranger. In a similar sense, an amateur marathon runner may dissociate with pain during a long run. It sounds like an obvious step to take and one that will allow you to run longer or faster. However, a professional long-distance runner or cyclist will learn to associate with the pain. Even if we try to dissociate from pain, our brains will eventually listen to the signal of pain when it becomes too strong and performance will collapse as a result. Between the two, I am practicing the amateur method. I am surviving, but nothing more. I feel as though I am not connected to my body yet my legs are moving. Even in daily life, I feel as though I lack emotion. I am the pilot of a machine, but nothing more.

Despite my wavering consciousness, I've made it back. The floor is dirty and parts of tiling are missing, revealing more grime. Disgusting. After I drop off my laptop and jacket, I head to the bathroom. I stare at myself in the mirror. All I can see is my bloodshot eyes staring back at me with half-closed eyelids. I look like shit. I have the eyes of someone already dead. I think to myself that I wouldn't care if I die. I feel as if I am in the wrong place in my life. I want to be doing something greater, which has value. I am doing something, not nothing, but it's half-assed. It feels like I am standing still in a moving scene.

I am alive, but in a sense, I am not living. For years, this sensation lingered – a delusional belief that the environment I inhabited was immutable and the noise of my surroundings restricted me. I wanted to become free from the weight I carried which was ostensibly placed by others. After graduating and leaving home, I held expectations that I would gain the freedom to become more expressive and fulfilled. That once I got to university, I wouldn't be held back by the perception other people had of me and I would emerge from my prison. Yet as weeks turned into months nothing happened. Ultimately, I hadn't changed. Then I realized it was me. It shattered my hope. I am the one who is suffocating myself. I am the cause of my stagnation and suffering.

I tried to cope with my shortcomings, desperate not to find the culprit. I was alone with my thoughts, lacking logic, and filled with self-destructive emotions. Life was miserable. I was lonely, really lonely. No solace was available. Or rather, I chose not to seek solace and rejected it. Despite all, I didn't want to become a disappointment.

 It's funny to me because psychology fosters a multi-generational debate on the concept of how much of your person is predetermined by birth and the extent to which your personality and actions are influenced by surrounding factors. Consider the addict - is their crux a consequence of inherent flaws? Is it predestined by their genetic code or maybe their experience on Earth, by influences out of their control? Are you predetermined to become a failure because of your household and childhood? I thought I was influenced by my surroundings and that a change in environment would potentiate my growth as an individual. A change of scenery might help but true change requires deliberate action and a conscious effort of the mind. Longing for a dramatic upheaval is childlike, a misunderstanding at best. I finally figured out that inaction isn't an agent of change.

Spiral.

Should I just give up?? I don't know what the point of living is for me. I am a useless piece of shit and I am wasting the time I was granted. My life is slipping away, unclaimed, yet I can't understand my emptiness. I don't understand it. I don't understand why I am always falling short of my goals. Or rather I know why, but can't understand why I am made to be such a useless human being. Am I blessed because most people in their lives are useless but they don't realize they have wasted their lives doing nothing important? Or do they realize they lead meaningless lives and simply do not care? Does it even matter? In some ways, I wish I could be like that. Even worse, they might have a family and hope their children can shoulder the weight of their goals and expectations they were unable to achieve. I am not any better than that. I know that my time is being wasted yet I can't stop it. I want an excuse to cleanse my soul and free myself from the responsibility for my sins. Fuck, is this the way I atone? Do I deserve to have my life at this point?

Acceptance. Resignation.

I never knew how beautiful the view of the city was from up here. The sun will set soon. We are at the tail end of winter and yet I can still feel the wind whisper secrets in my ears. My mind is clear right now. The gravel beneath me creates a crunching sound as I walk towards the sky. I am standing at the edge of the world which cuts so deeply. The call of the void grips me. At that time, every sensation that was assaulting me paused abruptly. It was as if I had become a ghost in my own life, merely spectating the final act of a play that had long since lost its meaning.

For years, I pinned my failure to live up to my potential on others, untrue to myself and my desires. I deprived myself of freedom, trapping myself under the illusion of chains. I lived so cautiously, that I might as well not have lived at all in the first place. In the end, I am left empty.

Now, I lean into the dusk, more afraid of living than not, yielding to the unbending laws of the universe. My thoughts are composed of nothingness, clouded by weariness left behind from earlier. Yet, at that moment I felt a flicker of conscience touch my soul. My eyes, previously weighed down by resignation jerked open. Falling, the air screamed past me, leaving me enveloped in a blanket of opposing forces. In that moment, the flow of time became warped. It stretched into eternity. A memory of my loving parents hit me and the floodgates opened inside me. My mind began to unleash a torrent of memories, sensations, unspoken words, and dreams never chased. Why had it come to this? Where did I go wrong?

As I fell towards the pavement, every fiber of my being screamed in desperation, crafting an argument for life, one that I hadn't considered. It was an ironic conclusion – at the doors of death, I had never felt so fiercely a desire to find happiness.

"Ah, this is it–" 

….

[Detached from the mortal realm, a soul begins its journey in the afterlife.

Traveling through the ether are millions of souls in a celestial stream. Each shines with an inner light, reflecting a unique collection of triumphs, regrets, sorrows, and joys experienced. Drifting across seemingly endless space, following each other in succession to some final destination.

However, one soul diverges, forging a unique path. Quietly, as if not wanting to be seen, it defies inertia as it is pulled away by a mysterious force. Inexplicably, its fate is altered.]

Eventually, it reached something akin to a hidden passage– a gate at which no other soul arrived. As the door opened, it was met with an unfolding scene of unspoiled beauty. An intricate network of lush undergrowth and flowing rivers working in tandem. On the water's edge wildflowers were blooming in a variety of colors which were reflected on the clear surface of the river. However, it didn't give off a true sense of nature. At some point, it came off as too perfect, too vibrant. It seemed artificial and unreal. It was certainly impossible to believe there was a garden of this diversity and perfect geometry.

In the center of this space, there is nothing, but in an unexplainable way, something attempts to form. There is a deafening silence, but suddenly the air trembles in resistance to being manipulated by this strange phenomenon. Against its will, droplets of a reflective water-like substance swirl precisely, converging and collecting at a certain point, accumulating all of this matter. Over a period of a couple seconds, a sphere forms. This holds the form of a soul.

….

Immediately, I wince at the intensity of the light, my eyelids flickering until they can adjust to the brightness. As my conscience strengthens and memories flood into my head, my heart begins to race at the thought of what I had believed were my final moments. I now savor the feeling of the grass beneath me. I sharply exhaled as I had forgotten to breathe momentarily. 

I thought to myself, is what I experienced a dream? But the setting I found myself in is far more dream-like than what I can remember. It just doesn't make sense– 

My thoughts were interrupted by the presence of someone else

There is something, someone sitting in front of me, looking at me. An androgynous figure with a gentle smile. They are sitting at a small, circular dining table with a flower basket sitting on top. I cannot see its face clearly, but I get a strange sense of uneasiness. I imagine it's how an animal feels while people stare at them in an exhibit. Another figure is sitting on the opposite end, frowning, as if my presence is unsightly. They don't spare another second to look at me. 

I stand silently, waiting to be greeted, expectantly waiting for any type of interaction or invitation. Before I can say anything, my field of vision becomes dim. I get that sense of falling backward that instinctually wakes anyone yet I can't fight my fading consciousness.

As I'm falling, it turns its head away and goes back to what I imagine it was doing before I arrived. Right before I fall conscious, looking for anything to grasp onto, I catch wind of something being said by that mysterious figure– "I just thought it would be such a waste… "