EssayStoryJournalBook reviewReflectionResearchLetterPoemMemoir976 words5 min readAutosave enabledFor some time now, I’ve been trudging through my own private inferno—no flames, no devils with pitchforks, just endless shifts that burn me out without ever igniting real strength. Manual labor is my cross to bear for now; white-collar salvation keeps ghosting me like a bad Tinder date. Still, I’m painfully aware that I’m a few thousand steps ahead of that imaginary girl in Africa—though she’s no stranger to me. She lives in my marrow, reminding me of the days when having both the will and the ability to work still meant nothing, because opportunities were as mythical as unicorns on a Nairobi street. Back then, hope was just a cruel placebo. You whisper prayers into the void, clutching at the thinnest threads of miracle, fully aware you’re one voice among millions, and God, like a busy call center, isn’t likely to pick up yours first. Luck? Never my strong suit. Not in raffles, not in the schoolyard game draws where “winning” meant being first to read a battered library book. If luck couldn’t be bothered when the stakes were that low, why would it remember me now, when the jackpot is actual survival? Life, without means, is a stuck record. It doesn’t play forward; it just is—flat, endless, monotonous. No one takes you seriously, not even yourself. That’s betrayal of the highest order. So you hold on to scraps—possessions, ideas, half-smiles from a dad who measures you against “others” as though comparison charts were a family heirloom. You’re reminded that, despite being the so-called “perfect child,” success swerves around you like a motorist dodging potholes. Connections? Wrong ones. Timing? Always late to the party. Opportunities? Missed, only to land in the lap of some friend who, by cosmic coincidence, happened to show up at the right moment. Meanwhile, your morally flexible neighbor somehow scores a cushy job, shiny car, beautiful spouse, healthy children—the full Hallmark movie life package—while you’re left clapping from the sidelines. So you convene a board meeting with yourself and wonder if you accidentally fell into the wrong timeline, or worse, the wrong universe. How come you work twice as hard for half the return? Still, you pretend contentment, like a starving actor pretending the empty stage is enough. You lecture yourself about how life is more than material success, yet secretly you’d give anything for the dignity money buys—the confidence to pass as “decent” in this masquerade of survival. Without friends, your thoughts turn into echoes. You try to mingle with peers who dream in lowercase, but the effort exhausts you. So you dive headfirst into the classics—Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Sylvia Plath, Fitzgerald, Orwell—hoping to find solace, but they only ladle more existential soup into your already questionable mental pot. Then, by some lottery twist, you snag your sibling’s chance to travel abroad. Finally! A breakthrough? Not quite. Stepping off the plane, reality slaps harder than jet lag. The world isn’t ready for you—or perhaps it never will be. You feel like Alice peeking into Wonderland without an invite, or worse, a disposable bug in someone’s cosmic simulation. Maybe your story will never matter. But still, the tiniest spark insists: maybe, just maybe, if you keep grinding, someone will notice—or maybe you should notice yourself first. Forget fairy godmothers and knights in shining armor; Disney sold me that glittery scam, and I’m still shaking glitter out of my hair. If salvation exists, I must play both savior and saved. The cruel joke? Books and TV conspired against me, feeding me tales of miracles, destiny, and privilege as if they were universal truths. In reality, only the “special breed”—the privileged—can phone destiny like an Uber, and the universe obediently arrives. I read The Secret, yes, that feel-good manual for cosmic vending machines. It turns out the universe takes IOUs from the rich but ignores the poor. We’ve been programmed to swallow life at face value, but I can’t help scratching the surface, even if all I find underneath is rust. I used to pride myself on “surviving” poverty, but survival should mean more than crawling out intact; it should mean growth, transformation. Instead, I feel like a cracked vase held together with invisible tape. I avoid confrontation, undersell myself when compromise knocks, and can’t talk to my parents beyond polite weather reports. Vulnerability feels suicidal in a world full of vultures. Ironically, I’ve become a compulsive communicator now—as though years of silence left me hoarding words that won’t stop spilling. To strangers, I probably look put together, but here’s the punchline: I can't even trace my lost phone at the moment. It's been 72 hours! That’s like being a knight without armor or a fisherman without a net. I’ve long accepted that control is an illusion, though the universe enjoys rubbing it in like salt on a wound. I’m not depressed—just not amused by the script life handed me. The grass isn’t greener on the other side; it’s often just painted astroturf. But to my African peers dreaming of escape abroad, I’d still say: go. Even if only to discover how much better—or worse—it could get. At the end of the day, the question lingers, Shakespearean and sharp: To be, or not to be? I sigh, smirk, and answer: Be. Because what else is there when the universe is on Do Not Disturb? “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.” Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground) “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina) “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals) “I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.” F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise) “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” George Orwell (1984)