I’m sitting on a chair, my phone in my hands. I’m bored and decide to look at the news headlines: Youth still find it difficult to secure jobs in South Africa; Anti-foreigner violence causes investment concern in South Africa; Man shoots and kills girlfriend, turns gun on himself. I take a deep breath.

What’s my purpose in this world? I remember how excited I was about my future as a kid. I wanted to be many things, but here I am jobless and having everything I do end up in failure. I tried being a rapper, but I quit before I could release an album. I worked at a sofa repair shop, but it closed down. I tried selling ice pops but… Boom! The End. I don’t have any friends, I’m alone. The last friends I had in high school have gone their separate ways. My primary school buddies are shocked when they see the person I’ve become. I used to be a smart boy, but now I’m a loser waking up to eat the last slice of bread remaining in the bread bin. That’s who I am, even my father backs me up: “All you do is wake up to eat, go to your Facebook and go back to sleep, only to wake up again to eat.”

It used to hurt at first, but I’m now used to it. I also wish my father knew how hurt I get wondering about those like me on Facebook who sit behind the screen and weep, wishing to awaken everyone to our situation. But who would listen to me, I have no money or pack of voices behind me to back me up. In this world we listen to those with all worldly possessions, evidence for display, witnesses to present, and a story of their strive for perfection and justice to share. We’re living in a broken world, full of broken people. I’m a soul surrounded by blood-tears. This stream of pain never stops coming to me and hurting me.

We have all lost hope in this changed world. People call this change by different names: The end of the world, the new world order, Doomsday. It varies in people’s perceptions, but does it matter? No matter what we call it, the pain is still the same isn’t it? I don’t know if the past was better? Will the future be any different? All I know is that the present hurts. The fight of hurt begins in the homes and goes to the streets, the workspace and to the spirit. We live under the watch of this gigantic evil eye. We no longer have people to cry on physically but we’re forced to go to social media to cry with strangers, not knowing that our cry is taken as data and analysed to see how they can manipulate us into crying more. The same social media where we break the boundaries and limits set to our right for free speech. We spread propaganda for war; advocate violence and hatred based on our race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and cause harm to ourselves.

The social sites promise innocent lives freedom of expression while taking that very same freedom away from them through laws and leaving them naked with their lives exposed to judgment. For years careers have ended, and lives have been taken just with a few clicks on a keyboard. Someone has committed suicide because a comment that had a million followers said he didn’t deserve to live. We can’t do anything unless the world (ourselves) gives its approval. We all go to social media to cry and spell suicide notes. It’s comforting to have people back you up with words of sympathy, but when the night comes you sleep alone with your problems, dying slowly. Maybe if we had real physical friends and relatives we would be in better life states. But it’s the same even in real life, we are where we are because they fed on our cries and suffering and betrayed we ran to the fictional world.

I feel hurt by the state of the friendship I have with the last remaining true friend of mine. We fail to help each other make ends meet and the only thing we do is share sympathy while we grow beards under our parents’ roofs. I think we are forgetting of ourselves. We’re not going to be the grown ups we’re supposed to be. We’re becoming more robots than humans. The body tells you you’re destroying yourself by watching this violence, a woman must buy sexy clothing to take the next best looking picture which should receive a lot of praise and likes. I must post a great post to get followers. Or maybe this is in my mind, I’m seeing things, I’m depressed. Young adults are desperate and trying to make ends meet.

In silence, I take this piece as a fish who has to save it’s kind from extinction, through crossing the sea full of gigantic ships waiting to catch that last fish. I have to lay the last eggs of hope to the other side of the sea, where there’s peace, awareness, hope and everyone is free from mental slavery. I will protect these eggs until they hatch, then I’ll rest in peace knowing hope has been restored in us, because we are the sea.

And as I said, I’m sitting, holding my phone. But now I feel like I’m losing my mind as I’m forced to watch my life burn into ashes. Even the chair I’m sitting on disappears. I cry, but my tears never touch the ground as I’m being consumed. My phone perishes from my fingers as I’m counting the seconds left before I press the last full stop to this piece. May I be saved from my own thoughts.