I sit here in front of the computer, facing the uncertainty of what I will become one day. It is the lack of empathy — not with the world, but with myself — that has defined my life; my resignation to being just another face in the crowd. I claim to be different, I feel misunderstood by the majority, and yet I still fall into the sorrow of superficiality, of drinking to find courage, of fleeing from the deep conversations that heal, only touching upon those truths when I am consumed by fiction.
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It has taken me twenty-one years to realize I was wrong, to realize that I am not content with being just one more of the rest. Twenty-one years lost or won, depending on the perspective; because in the end, everything is perspective. That question haunts my head constantly: What do I need to be happy? Something inside tells me to organize my life, to wake up at seven-thirty every morning, to get in shape, to get perfect grades and devote my life to study. But I always end up returning to the same place, with the same fears, with the same problems. It crosses my mind that there isn’t enough courage in me to achieve what I want, or perhaps, that this isn’t what I want at all.
My soul has been consumed by easy pleasure, by empty relationships with no depth, and I have ended up becoming just that: one more sheep following the herd, realizing I was made to follow my own path, yet resting my foot back on the marked ‘X’, time after time, without rest. Today, I would like to be famous, like an actor or those people who leave a mark on others with their music, but I have come to realize that it is not fame I seek. It is that thing I have never achieved, and which famous people seem to have: finding peace within their talents, and being able to escape this deflated wheel that rides closer to the steel rim with each passing day, grinding against the inside, until soon, it will never be able to be inflated again.
