III

And with that I fully became a hikikomori: no job, no friends, no girlfriend, no nothing except reading and writing.

And I kept that emptiness for five years.

It was pretty simple, though: I just had a bunch of projects I was writing, and a bunch of books I was reading—I even started reading literature, philosophy and art essays—so when I got bored of something, I could easily distract myself with something else.

At that time I bought and read so many books I started to buy bookshelves to fit them all in. They covered all my room walls and windows. And I wrote so much I finished one novel, two editions of a second one, a couple short stories and a lot of unfinished works.

Over two thousand pages of pretentious bs, and the number increased every single day. I kept myself so busy all the time I could barely realize how fragile I really was.

When I thought about my future or about getting a job, I immediately felt really anxious or depressed, so I always came with an excuse of my situation, like: "Jobs are a life sucking threat. I'd rather kill myself than give them the best years of my life for a joke of a salary and a ton of stress and unhappiness." Or: "There's no reason for me to get stressed with that; I just need to polish my writing skill a little bit to become a writer." Or: "It's ok. I know I need a job, but I'm just waiting for the right one. Maybe my favorite library will be hiring again soon, and maybe they'll hire me this time."

But, weirdly enough, I didn't need an excuse when I thought about all the friends I abandoned. I just felt nothing about them, so I started to wonder if something was really wrong with me, if I was so eager to distance myself from everyone because I was so fragile and lonely that someone else's company will just break me.

I was sure if someone hugged me at that time I would end up crying.

But no one did, so I could keep that lifestyle for five years, until one weekend I felt a mild pain in my left shoulder. I just ignored it at first—maybe I just slept in a bad position or something—but when the pain expanded to my chest and chin on Monday I panicked: my family has always been prone to heart diseases, and I knew my symptoms were related to that, so I scheduled an appointment with a cardiologist for that same day. He took my blood pressure, and it was like 165/129, so he gave me some medicine to calm me down and stop the pain and schedule an appointment for the next day.

So I went back home and tried to relax, but I couldn't, so I just went to sleep.

The next day, the doctor checked me again and concluded that, indeed, I had hypertension.

Yeah, I was a 28 year old with heart problems.

He then gave me a prescription that I had to take for the rest of my life and ask me to see him again in three months.

I was devastated; the chances of me dying young seemed pretty high, and the idea that I could start having heart attacks terrified me.

That was the first time I felt death as something real.

During my five years of isolation, I kinda knew I was gonna die young and alone, but I didn't really care.

"Death is only natural," I used to scared. "Being scared of it is pointless."

But, despite all my bs, I was scared, and that's when I realized maybe wasting some of the best years of my life with a bunch of hobbies wasn't really worth it, so I decided to stop being a hikikomori.

And for that I made a list:

‡ Be healthy again;

‡ Get some friends;

‡ Get a job;

‡ Get a girlfriend.

First I started to take better care of myself: I enrolled to a gym and started jogging on a treadmill each day and I tried to eat healthier and heart-friendlier—more oatmeal, pecans, and less sodium.

Sooner than later I started to lose weight, and my blood pressure started to decrease; it even reached got to the point it was so low I got scared of that.

Anyway, three months passed, and the doctor checked me again and told me I was doing so fine I could stop taking the pills in my prescription, but recommended me to keep measuring my blood pressure from time to time.

✓ Be healthy again;

‡ Get some friends;

‡ Get a job;

‡ Get a girlfriend.

So, an easy way to start socializing and make some friends was to find people who share my same interest.

And that's why enrolled in some literature courses like storytelling and creative writing.

It was pretty hard at first: me, sitting with a lot of strangers and sharing with them my work—either some of my new and old short stories or all the activities we did there—dealing with their awkward silences when they had to comment some of my work—which meant it wasn't any good.

After a couple months I started to get to know them—and also I improved my writing skills so they started complimenting my work more often. They there were pretty nice and recommended me a lot of books and writers, and we even hanged out after class a couple times.

But after a year they started to seem a little snobby; it was kind of annoying how they believed they knew it all and talked about things they didn't understand with an air of superiority and condescendence, or how their prose was trying so hard to be pretentious and complex it ended up as cryptic and illegible bs, or how they were so full of themselves when their works weren't even that good.

And then I realized I was the most worst of them all.

I hated it so much all my writing became simpler and clearer. I stopped focusing on philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, sociology and so on, and I started writing about me, about my fears and concerns—and that's why I mostly write about sad people.

I also started reading simpler novels with a simpler prose. I even started to read light novels, graphic novels and manga.

And I enjoyed them way more than the books I used to read.

I also started watching more movies, series and even anime.

So, everything seemed to be coming my way little by little.

That is until 2020 came.