i spent all of yesterday studying one chapter of one textbook. 0 is the only number that can equal its negative self. i'm the person i've always been, neither good nor bad. i'm negative, i'm positive. my past and my future.

when you sum it all up, i must be nothing. maybe i cancel myself out. maybe that's why i'm a ghost.

months ago, i was barely studying at all. barely keeping myself alive. now i'm doing it harder than i ever have before. there's no one left to prove anything to but me. no other means of crawling through the impossible but my own two hands and legs.

wouldn’t it be so sad if, in my last semester here, we didn’t even speak? my lecture with the people i'm supposed to be closest with is the worst part of every week. it’s not a coincidence that there’s never room left for me to sit beside them. they don’t even look at me anymore. i sit in the back corner and they don’t know i’m there.

i made the mistake of asking one for help on an assignment. we barely speak. he still sent it. why? i didn't see it until after i'd already submitted my work. i didn't even thank him for it. why? i apologized. he never answered. mistake after mistake. my life is one big case on the mystery of my mistakes and i'll never crack it.

shouldn’t i have seen it coming? i’ve handed each one of them an excuse to leave. one dated my best friend and got his heart broken. i live with another and i made it our hell. and then, of course, there was you; the catalyst, the means to an end of those few blissful months when i didn’t have to question if i meant anything. i picked us apart, one by one, like dandelion tufts. and you all floated away. you seeded elsewhere.

i finally had a different dream a few nights ago; one with other characters, in another place. that's how i know it's finally happening. i'm finally at the top of the mountain. i look down at the wreckage behind me and the path ahead, and i know i'm going to get over this. my world is larger than you.

i am the worst version of myself when you're in my life and i still give you everything i have. every part of me wanted a second chance, and up until recently i would’ve stopped at nothing to get it. i've been so sure that if you were still my friend, you wouldn't treat me like the rest of them do. like i'm nothing.

but that's just it. i'm more your ghost than i am anyone's. you treat me just as bad. you treat me worse. you don't deserve to be written about the way i write about you. you’re not the portrait of perfection i paint you to be, just someone who got caught up in this cyclone of mistakes. you’re the eye of my storm.