Day Zero

it's jan 13th, 10 PM where I live. I've sort of hastily made the decision to quit -- on a random Tuesday. I'd been trying to quit since 2021, and miserably failed each time, with my longest record going up to nine days. Each one of those times, I had a reason to quit.

For example, it was once my first time leaving math class with a fake excuse. My teacher excused my leaving because she trusted that if I said I had a headache, that I must have. It was my first time not being prepared for a math test. She let me go, but it bothered me that I became that person.

That was in high school. I'm in college now, and I've shown up to plenty of math tests unprepared for that same reason. Maladaptive daydreaming. I've often spent days and nights too miserable to sit by myself -- just miserable enough to wallow in my daydreams.

This time, I don't have a reason to quit. I really don't, because I've gotten used to the way my life works. I'm desensitized to this whole thing. But there's still some light reaching the pit of this tunnel that calls me to the outside, because I know enough to know that something about what I've gotten used to, is growing to bury me.

I'm a twenty-something now. These are the years I thought I would go out and party. These are the years I imagined myself having all the friends I could think of, and smiling the most.

I can't say I live that life now. Even when I've partied, or talked to friends, or driven in the highways -- the life I live never really feels like mine. It feels like something I get to watch from a glass box inside my head. It feels like an intermission between the other life that goes on in my mind.

Life hasn't been easy for me. It's been far from easy. But things around me have changed. I'm not as helpless as I was in high school anymore.

I've got a good relationship. I live life at my dream school every single day without even being able to consciously process it for once. I study what I want, and I've been in therapy. I look the best I've ever looked. But it worries me that none of these things came to mind before I started typing this.

The only thing that ever mattered to me was the daydream.

I'm quitting now. Today. It's day zero, and here is where the real journey starts. This time, there's no bullsh*tting. There's only the knowing that if I don't follow the light now, I might never. There's only the knowing that as life is trying to bury me down, I can't go down with it. I have to fight to be who I want to be. I have to fight to live a life that I will be proud of when I pass. I have to fight to live a life I actually recognize.