13 · Basement Winters

I'm getting old now — I'm 22 years old, bro. My life is just this pile of shit. Everybody my age is matriculating into masters programmes, getting jobs, working at fucking quant firms, making tens of thousands of dollars. Why, God? Why should I be suffering? My life is genuinely shitty. I have nobody rooting for me. Nobody knows what is going on in my life, including me. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just praying to God that my life decisions don't fuck everything up, and all I've done is suffer and go through mental anguish while nothing happens. Just do it — why can't you stop this inner dialogue and just fucking work?

I hate that the only therapy I have right now is doing more work, getting a small dopamine hit from progress. And I hate that the only thought that helps me overcome this is that my parents and past generations suffered more than me. What a shitty consolation. I don't even know if I'll be happy with an Imperial offer, or LSE.

I still remember being in this same position preparing for the Korean SAT, crying my eyes out every night because of the unfathomable gap between the vision I know I can pull off and the laughable scores I kept getting on mocks. And here I am — same basement, larger pipe dream, solitude, a broken soul, so broken that I pray to a Jesus I have no idea why I believe in. Struggling with high school physics. I don't find meaning in my life right now. I don't make money. I'm a barista working eight hours a week. No internships, no career, no started business, no degree, no nothing — a 9.0 TMUA from three years ago is the petty pride I hold onto. I have this dream of first class honours at Cambridge, ten societies, a barista job, an online business doing eight figures by graduation, a DPhil in theoretical physics at Oxford, the Fields Medal, a postdoc at Princeton, professor at Stanford working with YC. And here I am — a complete pile of shit, A-levels in ten days, two past papers done per topic, no idea what the core practicals are. Doomscrolling before bed, skimming the Bible because I have no other string of hope to hold onto.

Why am I always depressed? I don't drink, I don't smoke, I haven't had a girlfriend in five years, I live with my parents, I'm a boring person, I have two friends I talk to. I wouldn't want to talk to myself. I'm always late, I procrastinate, I'm always down — why would anyone want to be around the person who has nothing going right?

Is this how everybody feels every day? It's not like I gave up — I completely let go. Such a fine line. Carrying this cross is just exhausting; I feel like I'm dragging it. What happened to "work hard and good things will happen"? How long should I trust God? Yes, I know: trust God, have faith, God's timing is the best timing, everything happens for you and not to you. But how can someone feel like this perpetually? I know this is the voice of the flesh — but how long is the delay? Does waiting in line build patience, or just spend it? I feel completely dead, a lost spirit dragging my flesh to God knows where. Part of me just needs it to end for two weeks — no, even a day. Just one day of no concerns. Please. What is wrong with the world? You know what — just trust. Blindly trust. I am completely lost, I have no idea, so the only choice is to keep going and pray to God that something is at the end of this tunnel, if it ever ends. Am I productive? No. Am I terrified? Yes. Is there anything else I can do that alleviates this fear and stress other than study? No. Then what is the one thing you can do? Just walk forward. You can't accelerate this phase — just feel everything fully and come out the other end. Don't stop. Put one foot in front of the other a billion times. That's all I know how to do. Drag. Crawl. The suffocating part is how significant the contrast is between my reality and the potential I know I can bring to birth.