The alarm goes off and it’s the first choice of the day. Stay in bed and be nobody, or get up and be yourself again? You invariably choose to stay in bed, in the happy nest of suspended reality, until you’re late for school.

School. Eventually you get there, usually a good two hours late. You show up to class and do basically nothing; you sit there and barely try to look attentive. You frustrate the hell out of your teachers, because they know how smart you are and don’t understand why you don’t do anything.

The reason is this: You have no idea how smart you really are. And something inside tells you that you’re not nearly as bright as everyone thinks you are. And you sure as hell don’t want anyone to know that you’re not spectacularly gifted, so you maintain your reputation as a brilliant slacker. It’s tough, but you’ve been doing it for years, so no problem.

In fact, you’ve spent about a decade pulling this off. Unfortunately, this is all you know how to do. So even if you tried to “change your ways,” you’d be utterly lost.

That’s no big deal, really. You feel lost a lot of the time when you’re at school. Because even though you’ve done this to yourself, you feel as if you’ve slipped through the cracks. But you’ve always slipped through the cracks. Even before you were a brilliant slacker, you were slipping through the cracks.

Being ahead of the pack in an environment that called for uniformity killed you. Being special in a place where they would’ve liked to burn you at the stake made you hesitant to be who you were. And eventually, that person slipped through your cracks, and you were a shadow.

What happened to your soul? The only place you feel truly safe is the place where you don’t have to be anything at all. You’re a different person for everyone that might be watching, and by yourself, you’re not a person at all.

You pretend to be real. But you’re not. You’re not anything, unless there’s someone there. You’re an emotionless thing that vaguely resembles a human, who laughs or pouts or does whatever is situationally appropriate but it’s a lie. It’s a damn good lie, but it’s empty and pointless all the same.

And then sometimes you’re not a human shadow, but no-one will notice the difference, because a good liar is always a good liar, and you don’t tell people shit. This is when you wish you were an emotionless shadow all of the time, as horrible as that might be.

So which is the greater of the evils? Is the desire to be rid of the lie of your everyday life worse than the lie itself? Is it wrong to spend your time in a void where you don’t have to be yourself, and can be what makes you happy, or at least what catches your interest for that moment?

The depressing truth is, you may never know.