Unbreakable Youth

Chapter 1

I breathe. I breathe. It's not enough. It's never enough. I don't know what I'm breathing. If it's air or gel or toxic sludge or oil. I lie naked on the cold floor under my massive, soft, four-poster bed with pastel coloured satin sheets. It's too soft. It smothers me.

My room is the perfect temperature. The perfect temperature to make me feel so very uncomfortably comfortable. I close my eyes and the darkness gives me a small measure of comfort. It's not enough though. It's not enough.

I am stranded. Wanting. Wanting something more than this. Longing for more. Longing for it with parts of my spirit that I can't even name. Parts of my spirit that I don't even know.

I'm not longing for more. Lord knows that I'm not longing for more. If anything I'm longing for less. Something ... something deeper than all this rot and clutter all around me. Something more than everything that can be quantified, can be empiricized, can be tasted.

I don't know what I want but lying here in the crowded darkness, I want something else.

I know that I have schoolwork to do. Schoolwork that I'm not doing. But I can't bring myself to care. Not now, with all these thoughts running dizzying circles around my head.

How I long for the everlasting dark blackness that comes after the end of the day. That comes after the end of life. The impenetrable blankness that penetrates through every part of one's being after they are no more of this world.

I might as well be. I definitely might be. Very soon.

I think of that. My young body overgrown with blooming flowers of red blood. The thought gives me some peace. The final freedom. The final peace. When you do not feel anything, do not want anything, do not need anything but to be nonexistent as eternity stretches out before you.

I'm not brave enough to do it myself.

I almost hope someone does it for me sooner or later.

Someone probably will do it sooner or later. I don't fit in. People like me don't exist in this society. Everyone is happy. Lucky. Filled with excitement and joy. I don't know why there are no people like me. But I'm pretty sure that the police or whoever kill off anyone who does end up a yearner like me.

This thought almost makes me want to hold onto life. Because if there are other people like me, I want to have the chance to just talk to one of them.

I lie on the marble floor, thinking. Thinking my day away like I always do. My head throbs, hurts. There is so much I have to learn. So much I have to unlearn. But I have no idea what I have to learn. I have no idea what I have to unlearn. I have no idea where to start.

My consciousness eventually fades out into blackness and when I awake again I'm in the darkness. I need to check what time it is. I squeeze myself through the tight emptiness between the floor and my bed frame. And I feel around my stone nightstand until I find my holo box. I turn on the small cube and a projection of the time floats in the darkness of my room. It's four am. I likely haven't slept enough.

I get ready for school in the darkness. I would rather walk to school than take my car. The car is too ... it's too smooth, it's too soft, it's too tucked away from the world. I don't even like the world. But there's something about feeling the heat of the sun or the cold bite of the wind that makes me feel alive.

I wear the same clothes I always wear. The clothes my mother tells me not to wear. A simple black cotton shirt and grey sweatpants. They're not really comfortable. Too soft and too smooth for my liking. But I bought them myself and these are the best clothes I could find.

Most people would not like them. They give me more than a few strange looks.

I get my bag from its place on the ground beside my wide doors. And I enter into the rest of the overly-large house, dimly lit with coloured lights along the edges of the walls.

I close my eyes and step quietly, carefully, feeling my way around. Feeling my way to the door. I unlock it and make my way out into the world.

The dark blackness of the night is sawed away by glaring neon lights everywhere I turn. They shine from the walls of houses, painting the pictures of many things. They shine from sculptures placed on lawns. They shine from the signs of the many businesses that litter the streets. And they shine from the cars that speed by.

Even in the middle of the night the road is busy with cars. The streets are busy with shoppers and revellers. There is noise and music and chatter all around me.

Glowing coloured lanterns in all sorts of fantastic shapes line the streets on wires between the carved street posts. The sidewalk is made of a shining tile that throws back every colour lit upon it.

It's all too much. All way too much. I make my way to the alleys behind the bustling blocks. There the roads are narrow. The buildings are blank. The pavement is simple concrete and it doesn't press onto me. I keep my eyes lowered as I count the number of blocks I walk in order to navigate myself.

What do I want? What do I want? What do I want? This one question constantly revolves through my mind and as always I cannot find an answer.

But I think about the darkness that exists between all the light. And I think about how that darkness is trying to tell me something. Trying to tell me something. But I can never figure out what.

I think about the pain that swirls through my head day in and and day out. It's become almost like a friend to me, pushing me forwards through the inherent wrongness of my life. Pushing me in some kind of direction. Pushing me towards something that we both know I want. But it grates on me. Wears me down. Leaves me unable to function.

But I don't want to function in the way that they are telling me to function. I don't want to go to school and get good grades and then go off to college and then get my degree and then go get a job and earn money so that I can buy a big house and lots of nice things.

It seems like an empty and hollow thing to pursue. Like a nothing type of thing to want.

But so much of life seems hollow. So much of life seems like nothing. No, nothing is not the right word. It seems like things. Yes. But it seems like too many things. It seems like an overflow of things. An overflow of of things that are ultimately worthless.

Everything around me seems worthless. No, not worthless. Worthless has connotations of powerlessness. Of neutrality. Everything around me grates down on me hard and aggressive. Everything is actively malicious.

I don't know why I feel this way. I tried, I tried for so long to feel like nothing was wrong. I tried for so long to not feel threatened by the entirety of this world. I tried for so long to live at peace.

And I did it. I did do it. I succeeded at being happy. But as content as I was, there was always this tiny part of my mind that was screaming at me that everything was deeply, horrifically fcking wrong. That the way I was living my life was deeply horrifically fcking wrong.

That part of myself was so deeply and bloodily disturbed at the person I had become. And it was right. It was so right. It was true. It was so true. I had to listen to it.

And so I did. And I felt a sense of freedom, an intangible sense of beauty, a sense of rightness I was absolutely intoxicated on. And it hurt. Being in opposition with everything, for reasons you didn't even know, for longings your couldn't even place, that hurt a lot. Constantly being weary of the world and everything in it hurt. So much. Being the outsider, the outcast, the lonely, it hurt. But there was a sense of freedom to it that I would not trade for anything at all. Not even peace.

If my existence was meant to be a constant war, against forces unknown, then so be it. But I know there is something at the end of this twisted tunnel. Something that will give me the clarity I've spent my whole existence in want of.

The night air is cold. It makes me shiver lightly. That's good though. The discomfort makes me feel alive. It makes me feel real. It makes me feel like I have some sort of purpose, some sort of belonging.

The weather exists. And that means nature exists, somewhere. It means that a part of nature exists. It hasn't been killed by the sprawl of the city where everything is falsely, empirically beautiful and comfortable and perfect. Nature exists and I can feel it. I can feel the weather. That means I'm a part of nature. Nature has the ability to hold me and welcome me. That means I'm alive.

Sometimes I don't feel alive. Heck, I don't even know what being alive means. That means I can't know whether I feel alive or not. But I can know that sometimes I feel like I'm going towards something. And sometimes I feel like I barely exist.

I don't know what the point of life is. I feel, both amaranthinely effervecently, like there must be a point There must be something that I'm missing. There must be a reason why I exist. Why we exist.

If only I could find that reason.

I don't have the faintest idea where to start. There's something. Even if that something is nothingness. There is something. Or a nothingness. That is out there somewhere. That I have to reach somehow.

I am at the looming monolith that makes up the school building. It shines in the light of the night. The sun is not up yet. That means that I still have at least forty five minutes before school starts. I tuck myself away beside the large crystal school doors. And I lie on the hard ground. It's cold. I close my eyes.

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