Hello, is there anybody in there? just nod if you can hear me.

Every day I wake up I try to be positive even though my sister most of the time wakes up hating her life. Bad dreams again? You couldn’t sleep? Work is bad? Why do we live on this planet bad? I try to put on this strong mask that I got myself together. Life is what you make it they say. I am after all lucky to be alive. I am lucky to be in this country where I will not be controlled by a man or killed by a gun. However, I am being killed mentally every day. People are like machines here. Everybody minds their own thing and there is this lifeless energy that haunts the whole country. In my five years of living here I have not seen a happy face like a truly happy face. In my life in my home country even during war I have seen more happy faces and positive energy that was in the streets. Everybody wanted to steal those moments of happiness. We were haunting for those moments of happiness every day, waiting patiently for them so we can catch them before they go. I have read many self-help books, started meditating, went to therapy and graduated my masters in this country. I have loved and lost, I have cried, and I have laughed but deep down there is this deep feeling of darkness, of dark energy that haunts the warmest summer days to the darkest winter nights. Sometimes I wonder if it is in the air? Or in the water we drink? Machines everywhere and I am looking for humans. The humans that I manage to meet are broken so deeply that they want to die while they are alive. No inspirational energy, almost nothing to look forward to. Material things and passing by life with minimum emotional attachment seems the way that people here live their lives. People do not want to feel things, they want facts, they want goals and a lot of likes on Instagram. I wake up and I try to meditate, I take a cold shower as Wim Hof recommends and I put on an audio book about financial literacy on the way to work. I call the migration board as if they will ever reply or give any helpful answer even if they did. I feel stuck, stuck in the office that is so fancy visitors are taking pictures and videos of. My boss seems happy and my colleagues tell me I should be proud of the work I am presenting. Deep inside of me I want to ask them: but does any of this really matter? Is it worth it? But instead I smile and say, how nice of them to say that and that I am here to do my best. Deep down inside I know that I am trying to do my best to stay alive more than anything. Trying my best to wake up every day at 7 am and put a smile on my face as if my country being at war doesn’t really haunt me. Put a smile true enough to make people believe that I am one of them. I also think working here is great, let’s lie to customers even more. Let’s bond them emotionally to the brand so they feel we are part of their identity. Sometimes I leave it all and I start drawing on a post-it notes some abstract art that even I cannot understand its meaning. I hang it on my desk to give myself an illusion of control, an illusion that everything is okay because how would I have the luxury to draw nowadays without everything being okay or even more that okay. In this miserable life, I am living the dream of millions of people in third world countries. I am sick of pretending to be happy, I am sick of putting a smile on my face, I am sick of waking up every morning, I am sick of being sick of everything that is wrong with the world. I wish I was a dog or some animal with no consciousness. Is this how it feels to be on top of the evolutionary ladder? Oh well, that sucks! I have my hobbies that I think help me stay sane, but I am not sure if there are just making me feel more pressured since I do not have enough time to get good at any of them. All the lives I want to live and all the dreams I have are starting to make me more depressed than ever. Some friends tell me life is simple you just need to find your way out. I pretend I understand and shake my head agreeing but I am not sure they understand that they are not out, nobody is out, we are all part of it even if we consider ourselves “out”. How can you even be out? Basically, being out means going and living somewhere in the wild like into the wild movie? The guy dies at the end (spoiler alert) and there is no way back. He writes at the end that happiness only real when shared. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is there anything that is real? I mean come one what is real? What is true? What is a lie? and what is just a damn thought that makes us feel worse about wanting to be out knowing that at the end of the day we would always wish to be back where we started!!! Oh well at least we have the internet so I can write this and vent and hope that someone will ever read this and be like yeah, I get it man! or even better give me an advice where to move once/ if i ever get those papers that are supposed to give human rights, I am sure the papers will give me more rights but I am unsure about the human part.