voice | kth

n e w n e i g h b o r

   Insomniac.

Is that what you had become?

The answer, unfortunately, was yes.

It all started in high school. You were a normal student, maybe a little shy or distant from others, but you had friends. You had a fair and well life. You had perfect grades and proud parents because of it.

Until, all of a sudden, sophomore year started to kick your ass.

In the blink of an eye, your grades started to diminish, your new stressful behavior pushed your friends away, and you became overworked.

Your parents weren't proud of you anymore, and that crushed you, so you became a slave to your own stress and anxiety.

You worked all night long, only to receive unacceptable grades in return, no matter how hard you seemed to push yourself.

This carried on all throughout high school, and your parents were embarrassed to call you their daughter.

They expected perfection, which you had always been, but not anymore, so they stopped paying attention to you. They had no reason to after all.

You slowly weren't cared for, and had no one to care for yourself.

Your life was crumbling, and so was your mental health.

You had planned on going to a high class college that your parents were happy to pay for, but not anymore. You were crushed, but you understood. You were worthless; broken.

You had no future, and that killed you a little more each day.

No longer wishing to be a burden to your parents, you moved out and into an apartment. No college, just work and surviving on your own; alone.

You didn't even have a pet, simply because you couldn't afford to take care of one.

It didn't help that the apartment you lived in had paper thin walls, and you constantly heard what your neighbors were doing. So, you became more interested in their lives than your own, but it got boring because it was the same thing over and over with this person who became boring almost instantly.

Again, you were reminded just how hopelessly lonely and lost you were.

This was it for you; this was your life.

Having been in your apartment for a good six months now, you no longer knew what sleep was. You were broken down, tired, and you felt dead.

The reason for your sudden insomnia was unknown to you, but you knew it probably had to do with your stress and overall failure lifestyle.

So, you searched the internet for ways to cure your terrible sleeping habits and tried literally everything, but nothing worked.

Some things would start to, but the most sleep you would receive was only a few hours. It was at least enough for you to live on and not become insane, but it still felt like nothing.

You felt like nothing.

All it took was one day, one simple change that would transform your life forever.

The day your new neighbor moved in.