Phantom Pain 6 June, 2024

I haven’t updated the blog in a while because I was sick for a while - aches and headaches all over. But today I feel normal. And of course, when there’s fever, there’s fever dreams. And last night’s fever dream was something else.

Basically, I was panicking because of university deadlines. I was thinking to myself, what if I repeat the year again? How can I be 20+ years and still in university? How many black waves do I have to suffer to achieve my education? I imagined the student debt piling up, receiving no honours by the end of the year due to poor performance and having my CVs shredded, the image of the campus being burned in my retinas for eternity, just a nightmare of educational bureaucracy suffocating me.

Then I woke up and realised that I happily dropped out and have no intention of going back to finish the year. I’ll live my whole life a NEET if I have to. No worries.

But the phantom pain lingers. Those anxieties are still there. But I’m not upset. If anything, I’m satisfied. Like even though my life might be near shambles, it’s much better than what was before. Yes, life as a whole was better before - before COVID, before inflation - but I could not savour the nectar of such prosperity. Now I am free to embrace what little small joys there may be. The phantom pain helps keep in this mind.