Going with the flow

“One more week.” That was the ultimatum my mom set me.

I just finished school and was hoping that life calmed down for a bit after that. Well it did, until my mom’s patience with me ran thin. Granted, I was sitting at home doing not much other than playing video games, eating, sleeping and reading the occasional book. But it wasn’t as if school was easy. My dad left us before I got to know him, my mom got cancer and had to stop working, I had to pick up a job to support her… It wasn’t easy. Thankfully my mom got better, but I was hoping for a bit more gratitude on her end. After all, I did support her for two years while going to school. Oh well, you can’t have everything.

I never really had any free time, being stuck between school and a job. Also I was never the most social person. It did lead to some negative attention from my classmates, rumors spreading about that weird loner kid, who doesn’t even have hobbies. But I could mostly deal with it by just going with the flow.

Actually, that describes my whole life pretty well. Going with the flow. I never had any great ambitions, any big interests, any large wishes. I always just did enough to get by. My teachers didn’t like my lack of ambition. I was always told that I could do much better if I just put in a bit more effort, but I never saw any benefit to it. My boss didn’t like me, always comparing me to my coworkers and the extra mile they went. But I just didn’t have that extra mile in my tank. I think they call it the Pareto principle. Going 80% of the way with just 20% of the effort.

But eventually that flow has to stop. Just like a river finally ends up in the ocean, the water mixing and becoming lost in the vastness of the oceanic abyss, my life had finally spat me out at a crossroads where I couldn't go with the flow anymore. There was no more predetermined path for me, life didn’t just continue paving my path for me. I actually had to make a decision for once. And that’s a problem.

Obviously my mom wants me to have a good life. She doesn’t particularly want to throw me out, we get along well enough. But she just can’t afford me anymore, now that her benefits were cut. And if I were a normal person who could make decisions and not regret them afterwards, I was set up pretty nicely for life. My grades were good enough to enter college, but I was also always quite good with my hands so a blue-collar job might also be something for me. Natural science was always of interest to me, but I never quite found the one I wanted to specialize in. All the odd-jobs I’ve taken in the past were fine, however I never found any real passion for any of them.

And now I need to decide what I will be doing for the next 40 years of life, and to be able to look back without regret after they are over. A hard task for anyone, sure. But insurmountable for me. After all, when life gave me lemons, I always made the same lemonade, never trying out new things. Now I’ve got one week to make that new kind of lemonade before I get kicked out.

Safe to say, I was nervous. Sleepless nights, hunched over my keyboard, searching everything the internet had to offer in terms of jobs. There was a lot to sift through. Difficult jobs, difficult-to-get-into-jobs, difficult-to-get-passionate-about-jobs, difficult-to-make-a-living-from-jobs. The thought of just wanting to become a medieval peasant who doesn’t have to worry about much other than the weather tomorrow and when the tax collector will make his next visit crossed my mind more than once. But alas our modern world is a bit more complex than that.

The deadline drew closer and closer and the dread of not finding anything suitable to both my lifestyle and to support my mom really overwhelmed me. Other people also could do this, so why not myself? Even more: Other people usually have their path already figured out by the time they finish school, so why was I the odd one out?

It was not only the looming dread of the coming deadline that worried me more and more as I sifted through job descriptions. It seemed I was just unable for our society, where being born doesn’t determine your job for you. It was a crushing feeling.

Me being the weird loner without any passions may have been fine throughout my school days, but being the same kind of person doesn’t set you up for anything else. While I was never really interested in dating, it also kinda hurt being the only one who doesn’t get to make any experiences in that field. I was never really interested in socializing with my classmates, but it did kinda hurt to be the only one not invited to parties. It is certainly not a state I would want for the rest of my life.

Furthermore, what constitutes life after school? A very philosophical question I know, but someone as mundane as me could never hope to find love or found a family on his own. Hell I’d probably never amount to anything that anyone else would remember. Not even a footnote in the history books. It was a crushing realization.

After the second all-nighter in a row, my forehead made an unwanted contact with my keyboard. The stress proved to be too much and I surrendered to sleepiness.

My dreams that night were something else, nothing short of a fever dream. Arguments with my mother where we hurl insults like nothing else, dystopian futures where I sit alone on the street in the rain, being injured with no one to help. It just went on and on, my mind making images out of every possible future I had imagined while still awake. I just wanted it to stop. Not just the images, but the stress. The image of me tending to my medieval field came up again. At least something nice in this onslaught of negativity.

I wandered around through seemingly different worlds, into one where a beautiful green meadow with a stream running through greeted me. It was more of a clearing in a forest, surrounded by trees, except in the direction where the river came from. There stood a wonderful mountain range, the tops coated in pure white snow. It looked like the definition of the word ‘pristine’. Soon I laid down in the meadow, a feeling of warmth enveloping me. The reddish-orange glow of a setting sun accompanied me. It was nice just being part of the flow again. The flow of nature.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, I still laid in the meadow. I listened to the river gurgle and the insects around me chirp. There were birds singing and the gentle warmth that accompanied me to sleep once again surrounded me.

“This is nice. I want to stay here.” I thought to myself. “All the troubles, just melting away. This is probably what a vacation feels like.” I couldn’t tell, as I’ve never had one. I neither had the time, the money nor the interest to do one. But now I got it.

However that feeling of serenity did not last long. Something resembling a cricket jumped onto my face. The feeling was real… Almost too real. I tried to swat it away, but it jumped off before my hand touched it, causing me to hit my own face. The pain I felt was real. A sudden realization hit me and I jumped up. Fear overcame me, as I started to pat myself down, feeling every touch.

“There’s no way, is there?! I…I’m not actually here, am I?”