To preface all of this, I have had a difficult time with this assignment. I do not know what I want to do in the future or where and my everyday is just following the stepping stones laid out before me. Most of my mental energy goes towards being semiproductive most days and attempting to ignore my problems.  I deal with an unknown chronic pain, I have had more tests than I can count and a procedure or two to try and find it's cause. The pain is so bad that whenever it flairs up I can barely breathe, my vision goes dark, and I can only wait for it to fade back to a manageable level.  It has caused a lot of difficulty and has contributed to the shambles that is my mental health.  

I am not happy. Nor do I remember the last time I have ever been happy, happy without the catalyst of an event. I have to rely on synthetic emotions made in a lab to get up every day because somewhere along the lines of me developing into who I am, there was a coding error. The machine did not run anymore, and all hell broke loose. The radio waves fried, the flood gates opened, and all communication ceased. All that remained was static. Static and silence. But still, I continued, out of obligation. Even now, with some sense of self and a balanced chemical cocktail, I only do what is expected of me, of a person who exists, and a concept in others' minds out of obligation, to meet expectations of the others and the self.

When I went through an in-patient program, I only did the personal journaling, a required part of the healing process, so I could be cleared to go home. By not completing the required writings, I would prolong my stay. That would keep me from going back home and not returning to the everyday tedium that was expected of me. I did finish the journal, and I did go home, but I cannot say I truthfully took anything from the experience that's weight was not surpassed by the time I missed.

At times, I feel like Sisyphus. I roll my boulder up the mountain made up of the perceived expectations my feeble sense of self clings to. Never able to crest the summit and view what waits beyond.  What would I do when I no longer had to face that treacherous climb against the weight of my own mind? I don't know. So I continue. Each day, the same motions, the same empty goals.

One day, maybe, the cycle with stop and I will no longer need to wrestle with the swirling, empty abyss of the opinions I have collected, the assumptions I assumed to have been made, the notions that everyone outside of me sees what I am and they hold opinions and expectations that if I fail to meet any of them, even by the slightest, people will see me for what I am and shudder and shun me away. Then perhaps I can dream. I can look towards opportunities and no fear the obligations and expectations that come with each step, each stone overturned.