As I wander the streets of my village, chain smoking and listening to sad music, I wonder if I’ll ever grow up. I’m twenty four now, yet the issues that cloud my mind have been the same since I was a teenager. Will I ever stop feeling lonely? Will I ever lose weight? Is happiness achievable for me? The transition to adulthood has seemed seamless for those around me, finding themselves serious relationships and company cars, yet I spend my evenings doing the same thing I did when I was fifteen. Does it ever end? 

I wonder if I’ll ever reach a point where I actually want to get out of bed in the morning. I wonder if I’ll ever have a reason to live, not just survive. I wonder if there will ever come a day where I learn not to endlessly repeat the same mistakes and somehow manage to break free from the repetitive cycle of emptiness that has engulfed me for as long as I can remember. 

The lights of the lamppost cast my shadow deep into undergrowth as I flick another cigarette onto the ground and stomp it out. What was it that made me like this? Was there one single event that consigned me to this misery, or is this just how I’m destined to be? Snapchats come through and group chats ping with voice messages but I don’t have the energy to reply to either, locked in the self-wallowing sense of pity that so often consumes me. 

How many rounds of therapy is it going to take to get to the bottom of this? I’m on my eighth or ninth now I think. How many different tablets am I going to have to try before I can go longer than a few weeks without an existential crisis? How many more nights will I have to stare at the beautifully dark night sky before it starts to make some sort of sense? 

As I walk past the river, I think about jumping in. I won’t, obviously, but these kinds of thoughts pervade my thinking almost constantly. What would happen if I jumped in front of that car? What would happen if I swallowed all of those tablets? What would happen if I just didn’t get out of bed ever again? Would the world really miss me? I put my phone in my pocket and light another cigarette as the urge to throw it at a wall becomes too difficult to resist. 

Texts go unanswered. At what point does it become a cry for help? It’s probably naive of me to think that point hasn’t already been reached many, many years ago. The headlights of every car that drives past feels like a spotlight illuminating my failures in the darkness of the night.  My body feels as though it is ready to shut down. My cigarette tastes the same as it did all those years ago, when these walks first became a regular feature in my reluctant determination to make it to tomorrow. 

If I don’t remember anything of my life, and I find it impossible to envision a future beyond tomorrow, do I really exist? Where is the line between the existing and living? If I can’t go longer than two or three weeks without wishing I was dead, am I really alive? If I don’t recognise the person I see in the mirror, is he real? 

I’m home.