Life is a struggle.
Not in the "motivational poster" way. Not in the "you got this, king" kind of way. Just a slow, dragging, uphill crawl, where the end is another shift, another rent payment, another night alone.
I have a boring job, no friends, no qualifications, no motivation, no ambition, and no family.
Most days, I exist in a haze, dissociating, scrolling through novels and fanfiction, drowning out my thoughts with words that aren't mine, slipping into lives where I matter, where someone like me gets to be the main character.
I drift through work like a zombie. My body does what it needs to—shelving stock, packing orders—but my mind's elsewhere. Usually, in another world, somewhere better. Somewhere, I'm not... me.
I've always loved reincarnation stories.
The idea that you could start over somewhere else, away from your baggage—no memories, no mistakes, no shame. Just... a clean slate.
Rebirth is even better. Same soul, different timeline. You remember the lessons. You get a second chance and actually use it. Maybe build something new. A legacy. A family.
But authors always get it wrong. Either it's some cosmic karmic reward or a bored god playing dice with souls. Lazy writing. No weight. No reason. Just random bullshit.
Don't get me wrong—I believe in the multiverse, in other intelligent life. I believe in possibility. But that kind of convenience? That kind of divine handout? It's too easy.
Besides, none of the stories ever hit right. The characters are all self-righteous pricks or try-hard edge lords. Or worse—emotionally dead freaks collecting wives like loot in a game. It's always so... hollow.
I work in a shop. Stack shelves. Fulfill online orders. Smile when a customer asks where the milk is. That's the extent of my human interaction most days.
I live alone. Six years, six flats. Used to live with my parents before they passed. Sold the house. Didn't look back.
Grief didn't hit all at once. It came in waves. One day, I was just numb. The next, I couldn't breathe.
Then, my girlfriend left. A year and a half together—gone in a few sentences. Said I wasn't present. Said I stopped trying. She wasn't wrong.
Since leaving school, I've struggled to make new connections. Add grief to the mix, and yeah—I shut down. I'm self-aware enough to know I'm hard to love. I just don't have the energy to pretend I'm okay.
I'm not hideous. Above average, even. Dating isn't hard. Keeping someone? That's the problem. Who wants to stay with someone who barely wants to stay with themselves?
My ambition died with my CV, and my confidence went with it. I'm in a cycle of self-loathing that feeds itself, and I let it.
I don't talk to anyone about this. I just sit with it. Let it rot.
No contact with extended family. I saw them at weddings and funerals—always as a son, never as myself. Once my parents were gone, so was that connection. I didn't fight to keep it.
And yet... despite everything. Despite the mess of who I am now, I still have one dream.
I want a family.
A wife who loves me. Children, I can raise right. Daughters to dote on, sons to teach. I want to be the kind of father I never got to become.
I don't know if it's trauma or hope, but I believe I'd be good at it. Because I know what I needed. I know where I went wrong. And I wouldn't let them grow up with the same weight I carry now.
Sometimes, I wonder if I've already wasted the best years of my life. Not in some dramatic, self-destructive way—just in that quiet, invisible way people do when they let time slip by without doing anything that matters.
There was probably a moment when I could've changed things. Back in school, maybe. When I had her. If I'd answered that one call and sent that one message, just tried a little harder to fight whatever this is.
But I didn't.
There was no single moment that broke me. Just a slow buildup of missed chances. Friends, I let drift away. Women who were kind to me until I gave them nothing back. Opportunities I ignored because I was too tired, too scared, or too used to failing.
Now, I get through each day the same way: one eye on the clock, one hand on my phone, half of me somewhere else.
Wake up. Get ready. Go to work. Come home. Scroll. Lie down. Repeat.
Every day feels like déjà vu. The only real difference is which fictional world I disappear into after work.
Sometimes, it's a fantasy realm with magic and monsters. Sometimes, it's a story about someone rebuilding their life from scratch—someone like me, only smarter, braver, better.
But when I close the tab, I'm right back here. Same flat. Same dull lights. Same fridge with barely anything in it. The same thoughts echo through my head like background noise I can't turn off.
I'm not even unhappy in the dramatic sense. I just feel… nothing. Or too much. It depends on the day. Most of the time, I avoid mirrors. Not because I hate how I look—I don't. I just can't stand the expression on my face—that blank, tired stare, the confusion in my eyes, the quiet understanding that I'm watching myself fade in real-time and doing nothing to stop it.
Sometimes, I think about messaging someone. It's just a simple "Hey, how have you been?" But it always feels fake. I'd be dragging someone back into a friendship I already let die.
Other times, I scroll through job listings I'm not qualified for. I imagine showing up, dressed nicely, shaking hands, and speaking with confidence. Then I remember: I'm the guy who stacks shelves and hasn't updated his CV in four years.
I've thought about therapy. Thought about calling someone. But there's a voice in my head that always whispers: What's the point?
And most days, I don't have an answer.
All I really know is this:
If I keep going like this—avoiding people, avoiding effort, avoiding pain—I'll end up exactly where I'm already headed.
Alone.
Unnoticed.
Unchanged.
And the worst part is… I'm starting to accept that.
Some nights, I lie awake longer than I mean to. Not because I'm thinking—thinking implies a kind of control over your thoughts—but because they're loud, jumbled, tangled. A mess I can't organize or silence. Just echoes of regrets and what-ifs.
Lately, I've been tired in a different way. It's not the usual exhaustion from work or scrolling until my eyes sting. It's deeper than that. It's like something inside me is winding down, slowing, and fading.
I notice little things—how my chest feels heavier after walking upstairs, how my hands shake a bit when I reach too high, how sometimes my heartbeat flutters for no reason and then settles like nothing happened.
It's easy to brush off. I've always ignored things like that. What's the point in worrying when I don't even care enough to change anything? But it's there. That feeling. Like my body knows something I haven't admitted yet.
And lately, I've caught myself wondering—what if it just ended? Not in some tragic, attention-grabbing way. Just quietly. At home. No drama. No scene.
Just silence.
There's a strange peace in that thought. Not joy. Not longing. Just the idea that maybe the noise would finally stop. No more pretending. No more loop. No more scrolling through lives that aren't mine.
And yet… there's fear too. It creeps in at the edges of the thought, like a shadow following too close.
Not fear of pain. Fear of what if.
What if I die before ever trying?
What if there was something left? Some tiny, hidden corner of life I hadn't seen yet. Some version of me that got better, that broke the cycle. Someone who didn't give up.
Would I miss him?
I got home from work the way I always do: shoulders tight, feet sore. A bag of cheap groceries in one hand and my phone in the other.
The flat was quiet. Dim, like always. I tossed my stuff onto the counter, microwaved something I didn't even taste, and sat on the edge of my bed, scrolling through a half-finished novel I'd already forgotten the plot of.
Then it hit me.
Not like a movie. Not a sudden gasp or dramatic fall. Just a tightness. A pressure. Like something inside was squeezing too hard, too fast, too much.
I froze, my phone slipping from my hand onto the carpet. My heart felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my chest, and then suddenly, it couldn't beat at all.
My chest tightened one last time, and I fell sideways onto the floor. I didn't feel the impact. Just the coldness of it. The strange distance of it.
My body was shutting down, but my mind was still there—floating, flickering, remembering things that never seemed important until now.
The sunlight in my childhood bedroom.
The smell of my mother's cooking.
A laugh I hadn't heard in years.
The way her hand fit in mine the last time she forgave me.
For a second—less than a second—I thought, This is it.
And my mind went quiet.
No panic. No screaming. Just a strange, still moment where I felt both things at once:
Relief.
That I wouldn't have to keep doing this. That the loop might finally end. That the weight I'd been dragging every day might just… drop.
Fear.
That I'd wasted it. That I'd never be anything else. That I'd die as I lived: alone, unseen, unfinished.
I thought about my parents.
I thought about her.
I thought about the family I would never have.
And then everything slipped sideways.
The last thing I saw was my phone's cracked screen, half-lit and still open to someone else's story.