Chapter Text
I used to draw. In my childhood, I constantly doodled in the margins of my schoolwork and every piece of scrap paper I could find. The pages were full of my hopes and dreams. My favorite subjects were my family and classmates. I always wanted friends. I assumed that drawing others was the only way I thought I could achieve it.
And if you had asked me then what I wanted to do with my life, I would have said an artist in a heartbeat. My drawings became my escape from the harsh reality I was born into.
But I can recall the day I finally recognized that my dream would amount to nothing.
One day in elementary school I was drawing a cat on my paper. It was nothing special, but it caught the eye of the girl sitting next to me.
“Oh! Can you draw me?” She asked me excitedly. I was too frightened to say no, so I quickly agreed. The pen flew across my paper. I struggled to finish the drawing before she lost interest. When I completed it, I showed her. She took one glance at it, and frowned, “That doesn’t look very good. Why is my head so big?”
I looked down at my paper and my eyes saw the true nature of my art. I saw the shaky lines and odd shapes that made up the girl. I was terrible.
The real world wasn’t made for creativity. I would only end up disappointed and struggling if I kept my hopes to be an artist. That night I threw away all of my drawings. They were nothing but distractions from my real responsibilities. I never drew again after that.
The discoveries I made that day helped me realize the true nature of the world. Everything we do in this world will amount to nothing. People work and work everyday, but it doesn’t matter. We all die eventually and our lives are wasted. Why must humans work for our basic needs?
I would think about this often. My mind would wander in my classes and my grades began to drop because of it. My classmates distanced themselves from me because of my solitude. They found me “odd”. For years, I had attempted to make friends with my peers, but it seemed as if they never cared for me. I desperately reached out for connection to others. But I was ignored.
Slowly, I showed up to less and less classes. I didn’t care for grades at that point. For I had already opened my eyes to the pointlessness of it all. Why am I expected to study and get a good job, if it will become nothing. The potential money and power I may gain will only drag me down further. My parents scolded me everyday for it. But I didn’t care anymore.
Life has become boring. I didn’t like the thoughts of my future. Maybe I could leave an influence on this earth. Maybe I’m destined for something greater than I can see. Perhaps I will mean something one day. But my life does not seem to be heading in that direction. At this point, the only thing to cure my pain, would be to kill myself.