Though I slowly made some progress into feeling better each day, bit by bit, I never seemed to get a full grasp of my own life the way I wanted to. I struggled each day to find new people to hang out with, but my efforts were fruitless for the most part. I got into the good graces of Silla and her friends, but for some reason, they weren't all that interesting to me, not enough to force myself to go out of my way to try talking to them. Or maybe it was because I wanted them to be the ones making the effort to speak to me first, as they never really did in the first place.

But much more importantly than that, a new wave of distractions began to slam into my attention span like a ton of bricks. It all started when I found this amazing song online, and downloaded it to my music player. It's called Cynthia, generated by a lone Youtuber going by the handle Dracovallis. I can't explain why this music latched onto my mind so strongly. But every second of it playing changed my entire world and the way I saw it.

Every thought process in the back of my mind shifted in focus to anything and everything strange or otherworldly each time I played this song on repeat. I was totally hooked into this music, unable to let it go. There were other similar songs from the same person or of the same genre that gave me a similar feeling too.

On the stormy days that came from the approaching fall season, the clouds of storm in the daytime sky reflected some of the blue light from above, and some of the grey light from within the droplets. Glaring back at me, I became mesmerized by the beauty of such weather, my thoughts conjuring up entire worlds of fantasy populated by those clouds with no conscious effort on my part.

Before I knew it, imagining all kinds of incredible alternate worlds and other realities became the new chain of mental obsession stealing all my thoughts and attention away from my forward yet dull life. And it wasn't just the idea of other worlds that hypnotized me again. Though it took a little longer to return, that familiar, powerful, and wonderful montrum I had of the stars in the sky controlled my every thought in the night. Thoughts about the Altiri were just as addictive as the other crazy thoughts blowing around in my head. At home or at school, it became next to impossible to focus on grades or homework. Even the video games that I tried to play could not shake them away.

Whatever was coming back at me was powerful. Whatever was coming into me was undeniable. Whatever was calling out to me was something I could not ignore. The overwhelming thoughts in my mind had brewed into a sea of total madness, forcing me to live halfway inside of reality, and halfway inside of an infinite plethora of worlds in fantasy.

The line between the two began to blur, though I didn't try too hard to fight this sensation. All that I felt previous to now was all negative. Sadness and despair, hopelessness that I may ever have anyone fun to talk to, and the royal insignificance applied to myself when viewed from the perspective of the whole universe began to fragment me, forcing me to become a shell of what I was last year. Even knowing with certainty that I would one day get over it, I still wanted the alternate reality more. A better world; a world in which I could be friends with whoever I want whenever I want. I wanted to live inside of my relentless wave of strange dreams, I wanted to replace everything around me with the incredible worlds my overactive imagination could conjure up on the fly. I want to be part of a world inspired by my montrums, inspired by this music, inspired my every lingering desire inside me to be whole again.

Time travelers, vampires, psychics, plane shifters, I don't care which. I want one of them to be real. I want one of them to shatter my current reality and replace that broken frame with theirs. I'd give anything to live in a better world! I'd give everything to be somebody more amazing than the pathetic human that I am!

But no matter how much I try or want to, being part of another world is only something that I can imagine.