When the broad daylight woke me up from slumber, the constant buzzing of my phone atop the nightstand had my eyes fully wide open; silent, heavy with possibility and unmoving.
And thus, it’s time. The results were finally posted.
For a moment, I was still—imagining two versions of myself: one who opened it and found proof that I had become that “someone”, and one who opened it and found that I was still that of a “no one” at all.
Yet I reached for it, my phone lighting up, with my hands scrolling through my emails as I slowly sat up.
And there I read: “Congratulations, you have become what you’ve dreamt of.”
Upon scrolling further, my name, triumphantly, was listed on the top of the best candidates.
“First Place” it read. But the words did not explode, nor sing happily beneath my thoughts. They merely existed through my screen, small and indifferent. I waited for something to rise inside of me—anything, relief, joy, or delight—but instead was left only with a strange numbness. Like a pencil worn down to its metal—still moving across the page, still making marks, but long past the point of leaving anything bold or meaningful behind.
Then another notification popped up, and another.
“Congrats!”
“We knew you could do it.”
“So proud of you.”
“You definitely deserve it.”
With carefulness, I read their messages, as if my mind was searching for instructions of how I was supposed to feel. So I typed: “Thank you…” over and over, like a machine simply fulfilling its function. Slowly, hesitantly, I stood in front of the cracked mirror. There, I practiced smiling, until my cheekbones ached. Until they became perfectly still and maintained.
Until I was sure they looked correct.
At school, everything was louder.
People who had never spoken to me before now knew my name. Teachers nodded at me with a kind of approval that felt heavier than kindness. My classmates clapped on the back, their voices warm and distant at the same time.
“You did it!” they said.
“You must be so happy.”
And those words hit harder in the gut than they should have.
Happy?
I wasn’t unhappy, nor was I happy either.
I was just a “something else”. Something unfinished.
That night, I sat at my desk, surrounded by the evidence of my “successes”; certificates framed on the wall, medals resting on a shelf like small, silent moons. My laptop glowed with unfinished applications, new competitions, and new opportunities waiting to be conquered.
I stared at them, and a thought rose in my head again, familiar and relentless:
I strive for success, I desire milestones like air, and I carry a hunger that never satiates.
It was not dramatic hunger—it did not roar, but whispered.
It asked: “What’s next?”
I tried to remember the first time I had felt it. Maybe when I was still in elementary school when my teacher wrote “Excellent!” in red ink at the top of my paper. Maybe it was the way my parents smiled with relief as if my achievement had proven something fragile and important. Or maybe it was when I realized that praise made me visible.
And invisibility was unbearable.
Then my phone buzzed again.
Another message.
Another opportunity.
Another door that seemed to open before the last one had even finished closing.
“Applications for the National Program are now officially open!”
I stared at the words for a long time, the glow of the screen painting the room in pale blue. The medals behind me reflected faintly in the dark window, their small circles of metal catching the light like distant stars.
My thumb once again hovered over the link. I already knew what it would ask of me—more work, more nights spent chasing a version of myself that always seemed just one step ahead. Another milestone to reach, another line to add beneath my name. Another proof that I was someone.
I leaned back in my chair and let my eyes drift from the screen to the mirror across the room. The same practiced smile from earlier had long faded, leaving only a face that looked strangely unfamiliar. For years, I had believed that success would feel like arrival. Like stepping into a bright room where everything finally made sense.
But tonight, it felt less like arriving—
and more like standing in a hallway with an endless number of doors. Each one labeled with something promising: achievement, recognition, purpose. And every time I opened one, there was simply another hallway waiting on the other side.
My phone buzzed again, impatient.
I looked back down at the screen. The application link still waited for me, quiet and expectant.
For a moment, I imagined closing it.
Letting the hallway end here.
Letting the silence settle.
But my finger moved on its own, pressing the link open.
The form appeared instantly—blank boxes waiting to be filled with proof of who I was, what I had done, what I could still become. Maybe the hunger would never disappear. Maybe it was not something to defeat, but something I had already learned to live beside.
So I began typing again, the soft rhythm of the keyboard filling the quiet room. Outside, the night stretched endlessly forward. And somewhere between exhaustion and ambition, between satisfaction and emptiness, I continued moving—as if writing my name across pages where endings seem to blur.
