In My World

Every morning when I wake up, I ask myself, “Why should I even bother getting out of bed?”
Every morning when I look at myself in the mirror, I ask myself, “Why am I still alive?”
As clever as I am, I still can’t answer either of those questions.  Every moment of my life seems like it’s one challenge after the other.  No easing up.  No breaks.  It’s like a boxing match; I’ve gone 22 rounds without a moment’s rest.
All through middle school and high school I worked my ass off to get into a good college.  I pulled that off.  I even managed to figure out what I wanted to major in; a subject I liked as well as one that I was good at—Physics.
The first few years were okay.  Then things started falling apart.  Homework became more time-consuming.  Exams became less forgiving.  I couldn’t even afford to have a job during the school year because it takes me so much time to get anything accomplished.  Sometimes I’m down to one meal a day and four hours of sleep a night because I don’t have time for anything else.
But it seems like the more time passes, the harder things become.  My grades keep sinking lower and lower.  I always spend hours and hours studying for an exam.  I re-do all of the old homework.  I feel prepared.  But every time it ends the same way; after the exam is over with, I end up doing shots and going back to bed for the rest of the day because I’m too miserable to do anything else.

I don’t have the time or the money to change my area of study, but if I continue down the path I’m on, my grades are low enough that hoping I get admitted to any kind of graduate program is a delusion.  I don’t want to drop out.  I don’t want to fail anything.  I don’t want to have to get a lousy job and struggle to make ends meet.  But I don’t have what it takes to do anything more than that.  As far as I know, my life just hits a dead end around this time next year.  I just don’t go anywhere.

All that my family cares about are numbers on paper.  To them, I’m another tax deduction.  I’m another bill to pay.  I never hear, “What would you like to do?”.  I never hear “take a break, you’ve earned it.”  I never hear “Good  job!  I’m proud of you.”

All I hear is “Why haven’t you done [thing] yet?!” and “When are you going to get around to studying?!” and “When are you going to fill out applications for a job/grad school?!” and “Why can’t you get a 4.0 in all of your classes?!” and “I don’t understand the way you think!”.   I’ve even been told flat-out that I don’t deserve to have any time to spend on hobbies or with my friends because I don’t meet their standards of success.  They don’t want me; they just want a success story.  Something they can brag about to their coworkers.  A picture of some young man wearing a suit who pulls in a big salary and who—purely by coincidence—also happens to be related to them.  I gave up any hope of ever being good enough long ago.

When things go wrong at school or at work, they complain that I don’t stand up for myself.  But when I give my family a piece of my mind, they get angry.  How dare I!  Don’t I know that they’re always right and I’m always wrong?!

I feel like I’m a train heading off a cliff; in the end I’m just totally fucked, and there’s nothing I can do to venture off the rails.  And everyone seems to get pissed off when I try to slow down instead of speeding up.

“They wanna throw me in jail?  Man, I’m already in jail.  Don’t they know that my life is just one big cell?” – Anthrax, “In My World”