You know, everyone seems to have these pretty, cathedral murals of what they expect life to be like for me. I don't. Or at least, I don't seem to have one like theirs.

About 2 weeks ago, someone at my dad's church asked me if I had anything I was passionate about. The gears started turning as I tried to think of something, but I ultimately couldn't think of anything that felt definitive. I could come up with things I liked, like tinkering with my computers and making videos. But those weren't the answer I could feel was there, though I couldn't conjure it up. It didn't matter, though; the conversation just went into finding a niche that would be able to make you money. At least, that's all that I was able to get out of it.

Last week, my therapist asked me to think about how I see my life in 2 years. I still haven't answered it, and frankly, I don't know if I'll ever be able to. I can't even think about how I see my life in 2 months, let alone 2 weeks. The world feels so fragmented that I can hardly piece together the present.

Everyone seems to have their dreams, desires, and passions. Ideals of the world in the future, ideals of their life in the future. Picturesque visions of grandeur made of perfectly calculated steps.

I don't really have any like that. At best, just serrated shards of a puzzle I'm still struggling to solve as the world's waves crash on the beach as I attempt to make something out of whatever washes ashore, turning the experience into a metroidvanic roguelike.

It's been a constant theme as of late: my dad tried to get me to come up with a 3-year plan a year or so ago. My mom says that I need to come up with a plan. My older sister says that I need to plan. My stepdad says that I need to hurry up and take the exam for this certification. My mom says I need to go back to school and finish my degree. My dad says I need to get a job. That I should do this, that I should do that, that I'm so intelligent with my IQ of 2,374,821,347,837, that I'm 97 years old and if I don't hurry up, my life will slip away from me and I'll be dead.

Everyone seems to have all these desires for me to do great, to achieve something, to climb to the top of the world. To go back to being the grade-A student I was in grade school. To reach my potential. To return to my supposed peak. To become a god again.

But... I don't.

The siren cries of this god seem to wail louder at my dad's church. Sermons from the pastor all point to starting businesses, opportunities, rising up, wealth, making money. Is this all that Christianity is? Does Christianity only exist within capitalism? Is the world capitalism? Is God's wish for us to "win" at capitalism, and nothing more? To seize control? To take territory? To take capital? To become great? To rise above the stars? To rise above God? To become God?

All roads lead back to capitalism. All roads lead to the Ever-Rising Peak. Everything points back to more, more, more, MORE,

MORE,

MORE,

MORE,

MORE,

MORE,

MORE,

MORE,

MORE,

MORE.

...

I don't want more.

I just want to know that I'm not alone.

I know I have my family, and I know I have my friends, but how am I supposed to remember that I can rely on anyone when everyone's trying to push me off a cliff into a black hole of "independence", where I'll crushed by the infinite gravity of their expectations and torn apart twice at most. Once for when I possibly stab myself with a Stand Arrow to attempt to save my withering soul and achieve Heaven. And a final time when Heaven temporarily satisfies its lust for flesh as it tears me apart and devours me.

Whole. Skinned. Raw. Wriggling. Squirming. Barely alive.

Will you be happy then? Will you be happy when I make money? Will you be happy when I seize the world for myself? Will you be happy when I become a god among men? When I achieve all that you envision for me to do? When I achieve your dreams of grandeur? When I become God? When I become a hollow imitation of a human, wearing the shell and gutted for efficiency and power?

To be honest, I doubt you will. But it's immaterial.

I just want to know that the world I perceive and struggle to solve isn't a subconscious hyper-hysteria machination of my supposed almighty super-intelligence. I have things that I'd like to have, but when they become ephemeral because I simply don't have them, may never have them, and may never be able to keep them as the world twists and contorts into a farce of the one God and His Son designed, they become vanity, vanity.

I trust you mean well.

At the end of day, I want something that lasts, something real. The bonds that I have with those who have chosen to knit their souls to mine, despite my typical failures to maintain those cords of bdellium, they are priceless.

The best that I can do right now is to take each day one at a time. Work incredibly agile, take it slow, and try to regroup whenever the wind blows my puzzle away.

I don't believe that God uses force, so I won't try to force anyone to desire me, either. I'll just stick with the few that want me around for me as I wait for God to bless me.