Just One More Day

Just one more day.

For Sota, it began like all other days did. He had spent the last ten hours in a completely different world. A world that was a chaotic mixture of video games and online videos. Some of them provided him with a means of living out his favorite fantasy tropes. Others gave his overly strategic mind a place to flex and stretch. Lastly, they provided him some deprived baseline of social interaction. He may not actively contribute, but he could at least read the comments and conversations that others were having. 

All of it, however, was meant to be an escape. An escape that was ritualistically washed away by the glow of the sun peeking out over the horizon. With its rising came the sign that it was time for him to return to the real world for the time being. He took a deep breath as his usual defenses came online. 

"Just one more day," he repeated to himself, over and over like a mantra. He knew deep-down that it wasn't really one more day. There would be one-hundred more after that, and one-thousand more from there. Taking on all that solitude at once was a death-sentence, though. All he could do for now was re-frame and tackle what was in front of him. 

As his games and videos powered down, he looked to his clock. 5:15AM - same as every other day. He quickly got up from his chair and gave his legs a minute to re-circulate blood. Once that was done, he walked around his bed and made his way to the bathroom. He had about fifteen minutes to do everything that he needed to do before it would cause a problem, and that was not an ordeal he felt like facing. 

He moved through this small portion of his day like it was clockwork, because it was. The rest of his relatives typically awoke around 5:30 to begin getting ready. They all slept upstairs in the intended bedrooms, and usually wouldn't make their way down to the first floor for at least an additional twenty minutes. That gave him enough time to take one more trip to the bathroom and quietly make a trip to the kitchen. The goal was simply to make sure that nothing had been left out-of-place from the night before. He was meant to act as if he didn't exist, and that meant he needed to leave as minimal a trace as possible. He quietly put things back in their homes, taking in deep breaths of the non-stale air that he was used to from his room. 

He made his way back into the first floor bathroom, which had the only direct door leading to his bedroom. He quietly closed the door, pulled the curtains shut, and changed for bed. Above his head, he could hear that the rest of the household was coming online. Someone was walking around, another person was in the shower. There was a small echo of laughter as someone finished some early-morning joke. He was safe at this point, though. Now in pajamas, he crawled into bed and got himself completely under the covers. 

He waited there for about twenty minutes, listening to the footsteps and murmurings above. At this point, as per usual, the door to his room creaked open and the silhouette of a head poked in. Sota remained covered and unflinching. He knew it was his mother - scanning the environment and prodding him for any signs of movement. Sota had learned long ago that if he was 'asleep' when his mother came in, she would leave him be. If he had been engaged in any other activity, including productive ones, she would've stomped right in and began to berate him. Sleep seemed to be the only answer she'd accept. Most likely, because that was the closest she could get to not having him there. 

After about sixty seconds, the silhouette vanished and the door closed. A sigh of relief left Sota's lungs, and he got himself prepped to actually sleep. His "productive" family members - the ones who worked and actively pursued their ambitions - would all be out of the house by around 7am. The "undesirable" family members - those who had their roots in drug addiction and criminal activity, would not be back from their partying until closer to 4pm. He belonged to neither camp, which meant that he could sleep until roughly 2:30pm before he needed to get up, get ready, and get out. 

With that in mind, he allowed sleep to wash over him. With any luck, it would take him away to a fantasy land that could provide him some reprieve from his typical solitude. He was mistaken. Tonight was not a to be dreams of his fantasy, but nightmares from his memory. 

The eight hours he slept that day was like a twisted highlight reel of the last eight years of his life. That was around the time where he broke under the weight of his family. Being as smart as he was, he had been given two options. Ace his grades, or be disowned. He found no better solace or comfort at school. The stress of his home life often led to him escaping into games or overeating, which quickly grew out of hand. Not only had he begun botching his grades by the time middle school rolled around, but he was the unanimous "fatty" of his school grade. The other guys picked on him, and all of the girls considered him grotesque and unapproachable. He cried and screamed a lot back then, but years of consistency showed him that doing so would achieve nothing. His tears eventually dried, his emotions ran empty, and his soul became cold. 

Once he realized he didn't care anymore, he began to fight back - viciously. The calls to his parents from school were no longer "your son was beaten up by a group of bullies". They became "your son was being bullied, and then threw one of them out of a window". It only took a couple of instances like that for things to change. By sophomore year of high school, he was no longer "the fatty" - he simply didn't exist. People were too afraid of what they deemed to be psychopathic behavior, and so they stopped approaching him altogether. He was in no-mans-land, and that persisted right up through his initial attempt at college. 

While he aced the entrance exam for college, it turned into more of the same. Even amongst a seemingly smarter crowd, the stereotypes came back and he was "the fatty" again. It was around this point in his dream-cycle that one of his primary memories came to the forefront. The day he planned to end it, for it seemed like college was hopeless and there was no saving grace. He remembered it so vividly, calling his parents after he had cut himself open. It had not been fatal, but the images he sent to his parents were meant to send a message of help. His mother's response? 

"Do whatever it is you're planning on doing," her words pierced through the phone like a blade. "Anything is better than a dropout."

It was around this time that his alarm went off and he was shaken out of his corrosive memories. His mind returned to the present, one year after that incident had occurred. His father had graciously come and returned him home, but it was not without the same disappointment he had come to expect. From that point forward, he was isolated to his room as long as his family was home. There were only two times he was really able to leave. Late at night, which typically didn't go over well, or early afternoon like it was now. 

Sota hopped out of bed and turned off his alarm. He showered, got dressed, packed up his stuff and left the house with monotonous precision. He grabbed the keys to "the Beater", the only car that he was allowed to use, and the $10 that had been left for him on the table to feed himself for the day. As soon as he had everything, he got himself up and out of the house. 

As he drove along to his destination, his phone began going off. He checked the caller ID and immediately rolled his eyes at who it was. Despite that, he picked it up. 

"Hello?"

"Heyyy, Queen!" Riku's voice blurted out, his voice loud enough that Sota had to jerk the phone away from his ear. "You didn't think you'd get through today of all days without hearing from your bestie, did you?"

"No, I didn't. I can dream, though."

"Well keep those dreams alive, baby! I know tonight's a big night for you - and maybe she'll be the perfect fit!"

"Or she'll ghost me like the majority do," Sota replied with an eye-roll. 

"What?! Noooo, why would she do that? You're just flustered because that happened the last time..."

"Three times," Sota corrected. "I think 'Three' is an important metric there."

"Late bloomers always shine brightest!"

Their back-and-forth bickering continued on for about ten more minutes. While Sota constantly pushed back, he was happy to have Riku around. Riku had been his only friend over this last decade and was quite a bit more optimistic than he was. He was far from perfect, and often disappeared for weeks or months at a time, but he would pick things right back off where he left up when he did reappear. 

"Anyway, let me know how it goes! The boyfriend's getting home from work soon, so I'm going to start whipping up some dinner. It's a great day outside for grilling!"

The phone clicked off immediately after that. As quick as the typhoon came, it was gone. Sota hadn't really noticed how nice of a day out it was. Whether it was sunny or rainy, the outcomes of his days didn't change. He simply sighed and continued on towards his destination. 

While he had become incredibly nihilistic, this first date was the first glimmer of change he had experienced in some time. What else could he really latch onto at this point? He had been trying online dating for a couple of years now. In total, his brain had logged thousands of interactions he had tried to start. Of those, he had talked to maybe twelve girls? Three of them had gotten to the "first date" question, but had completed vanished after that. This was the first one that had actually agreed to meet for coffee. He was nervous to get his hopes up, but he also didn't want his depressive stance on life to ruin it. 

He pulled into the coffee shop about fifteen minutes before the date was supposed to start. He went in, sat down at his usual spot and ordered himself a coffee. It was at this point that he the extreme anxiety began to set in, as he expected it to. In order to feel less like a creep, he pulled out his laptop and began to work on something meaningless. He didn't want to sit their fidgeting or looking uncomfortable. Every now and again, his eyes would dart up to see if his date had arrived. This became more frequent as 3PM approached, which was when she was meant to arrive. 

3:00PM came - then 3:05, then 3:15. He checked his phone, making sure he hadn't missed a message. He sent a quick message over asking if she had forgotten or needed to reschedule. He was hoping, now desperately, that maybe she was just running late or hadn't seen him sitting there. 3:30 came and went, and by that point, the reality of things had begun to set in.

Finally, at around 3:45 as he began to pack up, his phone buzzed. 

"So sorry," the text read. "I was just thinking about it all day today and looking through pictures and decided you're really not my type. You'll find someone some day, though <3"

With that, what wind remained in his sails completely vanished. He didn't curse, he didn't cry, he simply threw it on top of the pile that was his life and carried on. He returned to his car, grabbed himself a large order for dinner, and then returned home. 

By this point, a couple of family members were home, so he elected to climb in through his first-floor window rather than use the main door. It would save him explanations and headaches, and he really wasn't in the mood for that. 

With his chance at change whisked away, he returned to his routine. He ate his dinner, and quickly re-absorbed himself back into his games and videos. With the date having gone nowhere, he ended up with several extra hours to escape into fantasy and escape the monotonous hell that was his life. He would game until it all began again at 6AM. He would do this day after day, until either something killed him or he eventually lost his sanity. His life-sentence didn't appear to be ending anytime soon, so he simply took a deep breath and waited for "just one more day".

Was it foolish for him to hold onto life for all this time? Some think maybe, some think maybe not. What everyone agrees to, however, is that his persistence is what allowed the winds of change to take hold of his life.