I Am Not a Rat

*As a disclaimer, 'rats' are not regular people with regular jobs. 'Rats' is a false perception that people are to be treated as test subjects, robots, or just another employee. Having a job and being alive is amazing. Loving your job and loving being alive is even more amazing. Rats don't get to experience that. I hope you do.*

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Dear future Zinnia,

Positive Vibes.

That's the name of the tea I'm drinking.

My hands burn as I sip the steamy beverage. Tchaikovsky is playing in the background and the moon is keeping me company. She doesn't talk as much as humans, so I keep her around.

As of today, I'm two days into summer vacation, one week post finals, two weeks post period, and three weeks post break down so I'm hoping to find positive vibes by any. Means. Necessary.

"What are you going to do with the rest of your life?"

"Aren't you a little behind?"

"What do you mean you're not ready for a relationship?"

"When are you going to give us grandkids?"

Well...at least the moon and the stars mind their business. We can be alone together out here in the backyard.

Our therapist says I have Anhedonia which is the reduced ability to experience pleasure. She might be right...I don't feel much of anything anymore.

Do yoga. Eat red foods. Carry smokey quartz in your pockets. Sit outside in the sun. Do SOMETHING to feel...anything. That was her advice...to do something.

So back underneath him I go.

Somehow I seem to forget every single time that he always makes me feel more empty than before.

He suffocates me and lately, I haven't liked it.

His hands feel like peer pressure.

He smells like the passion I don't have.

He looks like a dream I've had many times before but at different points in the storyline: familiar but unrecognizable, still.

He sounds like a song I used to play on repeat...and now I just press skip even though I added it to the queue.

He doesn't make me feel less numb...I don't think he can.

I don't think anyone can.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not able to give you what you want. I'm not ready for a relationship."

He took it hard, but...

*blocks him everywhere and on everything*

I couldn't feel sorry for him.

I can't feel much.

So...on to the next thing.

I ask myself, "Zinnia, what makes you happy even just a little?"

I like mornings.

"Great! Why don't we add waking up early to our serotonin schedule?"

Because I only like mornings. I don't like the waking up part.

"Who said anything about going to sleep?"

Drinking coffee at midnight and watching the sunrise. I used to LOVE doing that. It made me feel reckless. Back then I had school the next day. Now, I have work to think about.

I should probably do the responsible, adult thing and go to bed early.

"Sounds like a plan."

Or not.

Double shot of espresso? Check.

Place the golden pod into the Nespresso Vertuo? Check.

Grab an aesthetic, vintage glass from the cabinet so that the sun rays can shine through it at dawn and cast a rainbow on the wall? Check.

*Nespresso pees coffee*

The smell, O GAHD, it smells like dopamine.

I can't wait to inhale it and play Sims until the sun comes up.

These moments right here, this is where I feel happy.

...but happiness is like caffeine. It's there until it isn't.

I thought myself into an endless maze again until 4 in the morning.

It wasn't until the sun started to rise and paint a sweet 'good morning' glow throughout my tiny kitchen that I remembered what I even stayed awake for.

There through the dirty haze of my kitchen window, I watched as an electrifying tear fell from my eye that startled me. For the first time, I felt something real.

My teary eyes fogged as my brain released an epiphany I will hold dearly forever.

"Maybe I don't feel very much for very long because I've been conditioned to be an adult instead encouraged to be a human."

I felt human in the irresponsibility of not going to sleep in order to see the sunrise.

I felt alive when I decided not to go back to college.

I'm sure people would say it's a 'bad idea' to wonder what I'm going to do with today rather than the rest of my life...but today is all I have right now...and I don't want to waste today trying to prepare for tomorrow.

What if I had missed the sunrise worrying about the 'right thing' to do? I don't wanna miss the point of living.

I want to take drastic measures to see beautiful things that remind me that life isn't a rat race and that I am not a rat, after all.

No matter how much I felt like one.

Going to school to get a degree to work a job to make someone else richer. No wonder pleasure felt foreign. Nothing really seemed to have a point, because I forgot that I don't exist to be another rat on a wheel.

Maybe, just maybe, the point of me being alive...is to be alive and to love it.

Watching the sun continue to rise with my second cup of Artissio in hand, I peered through my small, little window. I could see my propagated herbs in tiny vases on the window sill growing as they were supposed to, and for the first time since I was a child, I saw a future for myself... growing as I'm supposed to.

At that moment, I stepped off the wheel.

So good luck to you, future Zinnia.

Stay off the wheel.

Keep growing. With Love, Zinnia