Sometimes I wonder why I'm even here. They say the odds of being born are 1 in 400 trillion, with those odds it must be luck that we are all here, yet somehow, I don't feel very lucky-on the contrary I feel quite the opposite. My life has been nothing but despair, withering away in my own damn solitude. It will be four years this November. Four years of doing nothing but staring aimlessly at the four walls of my fucking bedroom, rotting between mattress and sheet forcing myself to sleep so I don't have to deal with my own tragic reality. It wasn't always like that though-I had problems, yes- my life wasn't some glamorous fairy tell, but it was... a life at the very least. I used to play football and have friends, a decent amount as well. Hell, there was even a girl who had a crush on me. I really didn't know how good I had it. If only I could kick a football right now, and run as fast as my body allows. All outside problems become a blur, its simply you playing football. Your thoughts are on the game and the game only, nothing else matters, no matter what's going on outside the present game it all becomes a faded memory, amazing what kicking a ball around can do. It might seem excessive but it's true. I have no distractions now. No friends. No football. I have to face my problems. There is no escaping my reality. Today is my first real day of university, I had hoped that by the time my surgeries were complete I would be adequate to step back into the world-yet I still feel as dissociated from reality as I did prior, and here I am lying in bed as I fester in night sweat, unsticking my balls from my groin. All right let's get up then... but I can't, my body refuses to move as if my mattress and I have become one entity. I fucking hate this room, but I can't find a way to leave it. I have these moments of ambition like writing a book or learning a new language yet it's always I'll do it tomorrow, then tomorrow becomes the day after, then a week, then... then the ambition ceases to exist and I lay in bed counting down the hours till I can finally close my eyes again, and even then, my dreams taunt me of the life I once knew, or at least a version of me. But whoever that was is nothing but a relic of the past-a personality I no longer find familiar.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.