The clock is exactly 5:00 am.

I haven't slept a wink. I wanted to draw but had no motivation. Every night is the same, I tried to be productive but ended up having nothing done. Every night I stare at the ceiling, disappointed in myself.

Then I had an idea. If everything is so miserable, why not write it down? If I have no motivation to write the stories I made up with my imagination as a child, why not write something that's always in my mind? All these thoughts, why not put it into words?

Write a story so empty and uninteresting that will sum up my 13 years and 4 months of life. It will be boring, but it's my life. From my perspective, I'll describe everything I experience that may catch even the smallest amount of attention. And so I did, I put on a spotify playlist, opened the doc on my phone and started to write.

Well, let's start with tonight shall we? Today was nothing special, it's a holiday so I slept through the day and woke up around afternoon or so. I don't understand sometimes, why would someone not sleep during the day on holidays? The warm atmosphere is perfect to bundle myself up in a blanket and sleep, hoping with my every being, I'll have a wonderful dream.

While we're on the topic of dreams, I realized I found myself looking forward to dreaming rather than waking up. Inside a dream everything is so interesting unlike my everyday routine. Inside a dream I can be anything I want, my wildest imagination could come true and I'll finally be able to genuinely laugh again. But it's so unfortunate that most human beings don't remember the dreams they had. I don't either. But everytime I wake up I experience two things, the crushing thought of reality and the feeling (not memory) of having a nice dream and how much I would prefer being there than getting up. I have heard of lucid dreams, where you are aware that you're in a dream. The sound of it is so exciting, so I can't help but try. Just the thought of actually being able to escape from my life and have a wonderful time in a dream where everything under my control sounds too good to be true.

And it is. Not only is the technique hard to learn and I have a habit of giving up when I didn't get it right the first time. I hate that habit, but it's called a habit so It's not something I can stop at will. Not to add I have something called Aphantasia that's more driven to people's faces. It's when I am unable to imagine a face inside my mind. I can't imagine it at all, even my family members which I've been with for years. And it only applies to the face only, I can imagine everything else very good but it all becomes blurry when it comes to the face. And if lucid dreams are made of my own imagination, every person that I'll imagine would be faceless. And that sounds more like a nightmare rather than a dream.

Getting back to the original topic, I slept the day through and naturally I wouldn't want much sleep at night. No, I'm really tired right now. But somehow I just can't bring myself to sleep, I would love to shut my phone and see what tonight's dream has to offer but by sleeping I'll need to wake up. And by waking up I'll be faced with disappointment that the dream is not real. The only way to counter that is to die in my sleep, and I'm not really planning to do that. I have Thanatophobia so no matter how hard it is for me, dying is never an option I have whether I really want it or not.

So now I'm laying in bed, thinking about how pathetic I am. Why am I alive? How do people even live? I am amazed at adults for being able to accept this process of existence. How do you smile everyday knowing it's one day away from your death? How do you do anything at all knowing that the next step might be your last? I don't want to live and I don't want to die either. To live is to accept that I'm dying. Existing by itself is suffocating enough so why am I here?

For what exactly? Sure I have a dream just like everyone else but it's so far away. If that's the only motivation I have to live, then what if I failed? What if I don't manage to live up to my expectations? Saying I have a dream is nice, it's an imagination, I can create and tell it in any way I want. But realizing it is much harder.

Imagine this, you have a dream of being a pilot. As a child you would tell this to everyone, your only reason to dream this is that you say the view up there is beautiful. Naive right? Going on an airplane once and looking out the window and suddenly you decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. But growing up you learn more things about your dream, the difficulty and skillset it requires might not be in your capacity. So what will you do now? For a stupid reason you start to dream, years of hard work put into something all down the drain when you realise the reality to that dream.

People don't work because it's fun, they work to put food on the table. No you won't become a CEO just because that's what you present on your 4th grade show and tell class, you'll end up as an office worker at best. 'Dreams' is something adults say to make children have something to look forward to. To make them choose a path and force them to be in that path till they decide to change, quit, or (rarely) succeed. I see it on kid's shows all the time on TV, adults giving lessons to children about their jobs and saying how much they like it. Do you think even half of that is true? Do you really think they get home everyday from work with a perfect smile on their face? Do you believe them to be happy? "I want to do this because it seems fun" will quickly turn into "I need to do this for the money" the older you get. I know this. Because this is the mindset I have.

If my dream is the only thing I look forward to in life, and I fail (which is likely because how many adults actually get to the point of realizing their dream anyway before giving up and picking up anything that can provide money), doesn't that mean I have no reason to live anymore? I have a harsh mindset for myself, something that my body can't catch up to leaving my mind to scold me to the point of going crazy. Success is the bare minimum for me. And if I don't get that then dying is a much better option.

To conclude, believing in my dream is like a do or die challenge. I either succeed or I die. And that's why I decided to stop expecting anything at all. To just put my expectations as low as possible and be glad with whatever result it gives. Sure it hurts my pride, but I'm not trying to die. So if not dreams can make me want to live then what will? Maybe games. A game I'm hooked on has an incredible storyline and I'll regret dying before I get to see the end. But it was expected to end after 10 years, so what am I gonna do after that? 10 years from now I'll be 24 which is too young to die from old age. So now I may have something to look forward to for the next 10 years but I haven't thought about what comes next.

I'm not happy now and it doesn't look like I'll be in the coming years, I can't just solve it by committing suicide either. So why am I alive at this exact moment? Why am I here? To just hate every inch of my flesh and blood? To be nauseated at the very realization of reality?

Maybe I need an adult that'll answer these questions for me, I am just a child after all.