What if we never dream of love lost or love hoped for and never feel pain and were never reminded, as the first rays of sunlight emerge from under the skyline? What if we never wake up wondering and hoping and losing all over again when the sun plunges deep into the ocean?

But the sun never complains about rising and setting, nor does it whine about the ferocity of noon and the darkness of the night. It rises and falls, but never falters, never weakened or repressed. It only rages like the ball of furious energy it was born, out of nothing, to be.

It wasn’t only lately that I would easily fall into bouts of depression and high levels of stress about details, events, people, even random moments when I suddenly drop into a sullen state for no apparent reason. It’s been like this for a long time, but it was only after college when it has become more manifest to me, when it has begun to hamper my work and my life in general.

Mostly, it comes from small things: photos I see, snippets I read, music I hear, people I meet, moments I remember, sometimes even the time of day. It’s sporadic with no easily discernible pattern. It just comes. And I just stop what I do and I feel it. Sometimes it lasts for a few hours, sometimes days. Last year it was six months.

It’s been a year since I left Facebook and eight months since I left Twitter. I would give you a thorough report about how it went, whether I’ve changed or now will be saintly enough to replace Mother Teresa’s throne, but that’s a story bound to be told in the next decade or so, when I’ve assuredly ripped the umbilical cord between me and the tools that have given birth to a domino of problems.

Quick disclaimer: I don’t promote leaving social media nor do I advertise its evils. It’s not Facebook that’s the problem. It’s me.

I remember you in the night, when the streets have silenced save from the countable cars that slip through empty roads. I remember you in the darkness, when all I have is my imagination of a story that could have been, written by my head that only thinks of you when I am alone. I remember you at midnight, when the clock has struck and the lights have gone to sleep and I am all by myself. You are a memory, fading like time and aging like the universe. For a moment you were my sun and I spun around your radiation. But it is dark and you are no longer here.

I’ve reached stasis. I am no longer excited about meeting the next day or pleased with what is now. There was a sparkle, a flare, a peek of sunshine. There was and it was all I needed to defibrillate my heart and electrify my soul and now, all I have is waiting—for the day to end, for the week to pass, for the next paycheck, for someone, something, anything to do that will feed my quarter-life crisis.

I’ve always thought I was one of those people who would make it. But being here now, I find that no one ever really does. And I think that’s okay, if only for the fact that we are not alone in being suck-ups and frantic chasers of The Life.