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Step into my homeheart at a dark hour.

The curtains are drawn on imperfect midnight, all too long this season, yet never complete in its reign. Slide half the curtain open, behold a familiar nightscape, not the ink of primordial darkness. Feel the rush of cold air as the chill by the window escapes confinement; this apartment has never been the same since they changed the thermostats. The new temperature is more economical, liveable, reasonable, cold, frigid, death to the idle body. Twenty degrees. Objectively fine, but I cannot bear to be within it. Beneath the blanket lies shelter.

From flawed midnight to imperfect warmth. The cold seeps in from every opening, yet the sweat of a perfect seal warps the fabric into a source of disgust. Always the maintenance, the basic demands of the human body imposed by draconian rule, a constant interruption to freedom. Am I hungry, thirsty, cold? Is my blood sugar all right? Do I need to visit the bathroom? Is my bile rising, are my apththous ulcers or prickly teeth and gums calling for attention? Do I want to sleep? Do I want to fall asleep but stay awake? Do I want to stay awake but fall asleep? Neither will be granted me, efforts be damned. It would be time to rise and face the day, but it isn’t even day. The earliest tendrils of dawn outside the window give an imperfect answer.

The winter dawn is not a revival. In the dark blue sky hangs a sullen headiness, the dark shapes given form by its light a mundane horror all the more terrifying for their normality. Every day I wake up and have to live. What’s worse, I don’t even want to die.

My life has ground to a halt. All the dreams of the future are slipping from my grasp. Though that is the irony, of course. I had never had the strength to honestly hold them in the first place. Before me is a mountain, a dark mass that I know that I could climb if but I had the will. But the will was never there, and that is why I fumble. The mountain is a well-traveled spot, with myriad guides to its sloped that I have not read; ascending it is difficult, but also to be expected of an adult. An opportunistic manchild, of course, has other options. The part of me that cares not for the future knows that this comfortable cocoon is an objectively sweet deal. Perhaps I would live here forever, if forever was an option. But the cracks are always within sight to spoil the view. How many years until my parents die? Perhaps in the transhumanist future I will live forever, but no doubt they were born too late to reach eternity. Dad knocks on the toilet door and proclaims in comedic tones his desire for my exit. I wipe and look down at the bloodstained bowl. The hemmorhoids aren’t even particularly bad; just darkly emblematic. I am old and young but mostly old; thirty-three. But both older and younger in spirit.

I look outside again. Winter dawn has reached its steely stage, overcast sky as oppressive as a lingering deadline. The buildings look as washed out as my soul. What little blue light comes from the sky rudely kicks my corporal systems; I am out of sync, zeitgeber: the systems wake, but unevenly. I perversely want to sleep again at exactly the wrong moment. 6:42 am.

One hundred and sixty-five credits. One fifteen-point course to finish my education and fling myself into the yawning mouth of adult employment. Fifteen points take the shape of a Mountain. They are special, for to gain them I must be employed, but on condition; be academic, but at another’s behest: the final product is a report but the process to report on is a work and employer-student-university coordination and multipart deadlines and forms and uiniversity-student communication and undefined sludge not even known as I dare not ask. I dread its slopes even as I know I could climb them. I dread its slopes even though I don’t even know what they’re like. I dread its slopes without trying. I dread the plunge from its top once I’m done.

The cocoon doesn’t look so bad anymore. Funny how I’ve made it worse.

My buffoonery is fractal. Aversion coats the Mountain, but what of the contents of my cage? Every heartfelt hobby is aversive, clad in the gown of Effort. Look like you’re having real fun? Now let’s make you think it’s work! What suits you, pathetic clown, is the effortless and immediate, the instant chat, the youtube video, the blandly regarded article. You don’t doomscroll but you always blandsurf. Every moment is an escape from responsibilities you didn’t even need to put on yourself. When was the last time you finished a VN? Don’t ask. Now I even fear what might come next in my fiction. What if it’s truly sad, what if I feel something? What if I cannot maintain my carefully crafted distance? My foolishness is fractal in this sense too. I know I will be fine on every intellectual level. But every trick has failed, every stratagem that once worked run dry, every honest effort bested by my sluggish nature. Back into the comforting cloak of mediocrity I go. It’s really not that bad, once the choir of despair fades into the background. It’s really not that bad to be me. It seems every day in chat someone else’s struggles eclipse mine. So who knows. Deep down I am an optimist. Holding that hope helps me endure this prison. But it also shows me a way out.

Will I escape the cocoon? No one can tell. Soon I will be back in sunnier mood. I hope we make it, and for now, goodbye.

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