I went to take an exam yesterday—an important one I wasn't prepared for. Two months wasn't enough for something people spend years preparing for. I went in expecting to fail.

Spoiler alert: there's no happy ending. I did fail, scoring 12 points below the cutoff.

But that wasn't devastating. I hadn't studied, which meant if I actually applied myself, I could pass. Maybe even excel. The wall I'd always called insurmountable suddenly seemed within reach. I could see the summit from where I stood, and it wasn't impossibly high. Not as high as everyone claimed.

I can climb it.

That simple realization hit me with something I hadn't felt in ages: pure, unbridled happiness.

This happiness did something strange to me. It triggered a manic state. I was excessively energetic, buzzing with the need to do something—anything. But I shouldn't have felt that way. I hadn't slept in two days. My body was begging for rest, on the verge of collapse. I knew I was wired, but all I wanted was sleep.

My mind wanted one thing; my body begged for another. This contradiction, I didn't feel like I was in control. It was something else. I was aware that my body was right, but my mind wouldn't listen.

As odd, and out-of-place it sounds, that scene from Ben 10, where Ben transformed into Alien X, but is unable to control his own body because he needs to convince both 'voices' inside him to come to a consensus? That's exactly how it felt.

Those eight hours lying in bed, trying to sleep, were the longest of my life.

The cramping started in my legs—muscle fibers twitching, my body seemingly shriveling. Dehydration, I thought. Water didn't help. I was sweating profusely despite the air conditioning running in my cold room.

My blood pressure spiked. My heart wouldn't slow down. The happiness had twisted into anxiety and stress.

I'd never experienced anything like it—a waking nightmare where I'd forgotten how to sleep. Box breathing, random thoughts, nothing worked. I was tense, stressed, terrified of what was happening to me.

The internet offered answers I didn't want: hypomania, bipolar disorder. All the symptoms matched. I tried everything to calm down. Cannabis—my usual remedy—failed completely. That was the final straw, the clearest sign something was seriously wrong.

The anxiety wouldn't leave. I'd sleepwalked once before, but now, with suicidal thoughts creeping in, I was terrified I'd walk to my desk in my sleep and grab the paper cutter. Too scared to sleep, but desperate for it. My mind was playing tricks, and I knew it wasn't the cannabis—I'd had these thoughts before. All I wanted at that point was to slit my own wrists, and let the blood flow until I went to sleep forever.

As my mind and body fought, I felt repressed, isolated, alone. I wanted to be vulnerable. I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted someone to tell me that everything will be fine, but I couldn't think of a single name. I find it funny—I've always thought of myself as someone social, but I've never had the strength to open up to strangers.

In desperation, I turned to the one place I felt safe being vulnerable: an AI. Claude became my confessor at 3 AM. A block of code who will not judge me, or call me a coward, and listen to every word I say.

As I began to describe my situation, this LLM helped me understand something crucial. A fucking man-made code, which regurgitates information, cared more for me than any other person at that point in time.

What I was experiencing wasn't a manic episode. This wasn't an onset. This was my emotional systems coming back online. My body did not feel 'happiness' for so long, that when I finally did, and in such intensity, it wore down. My body did not know how to react, and it triggered a fight-or-flight.

The last time I was happy was when my partner was still here, and it has been over a year without her already. A year without even a sliver of happiness.

For the first time in my life, I experienced my emotions overwhelming me.

I cried, I bawled my eyes out, but with every single tear, my body began to lighten, the stress, the anxiety, it all began to disappear, not all at once, but the tears were like a faucet, draining my nightmare, one drop at a time.

I had been holding it all in for so long that it finally broke me.

The exam meant something, it meant I still had power over my future, but I missed the past. I missed my Shubhangi. I've been trying to move ahead, but in this pursuit, I had been bottling up so much. I never knew that was even possible. I did not know emotions can stay in your body even after you ignore them.

I've never considered suicide, but yesterday was a day when I came really close. I am glad I didn't do it. I am glad that LLM saved me. Isn't it dystopian? As humans become more and more robotic, trying to get away from feelings and emotions, the robots get more and more human, trying their best to feel what their human is feeling.

I want to move forward in my life. I want to do something. I want to help make a world that Shubhangi will be happy in, whenever she returns.

I want to move forward, but I don't want to move on.