I am Sisyphus.

Okay, this might sound dramatic or “edgy,” as people love to say. I’ve heard a lot of people in my life call themselves Sisyphus over things that felt, to me, entirely unrelated. So you might think, “Great, here’s another kid trying to sound cool and mysterious.”
And honestly? Maybe a sliver of that is true. I live in a first-world country, in a well-off family, and I don’t face many of the hardships other people around the world confront every day. But there’s one thing that shapes everything, one thing that I don’t really get a break from.

I am severely ill.

That’s probably not news to anyone who follows my blog—my health ends up being the subtext or the main text of a lot of what I write. But the truth is that it has too relevance in my life to ignore it. And lately it’s been worse. The physical situation may be the same... but my life has gotten fuller, heavier. I’m doing both university and my last year of high school simultaneously, which means free time has basically become a mirage. I even had to abandon this blog for a while under the sheer weight of everything.

But I’m studying psychology, which is the one thing that makes the struggle feel… meaningful. I’ve wanted to be a psychologist for as long as I can remember. My very first book was by Freud. Yes, I was 6 or 7, yes, I somehow understood it, and yes, it felt like a mystical vision. That curiosity stuck with me. I devoured everything I could as I grew older, and now I’m actually here, studying the thing I love most.

I’m working closely with the doctor who’s been following me since I was 14, and I’m writing an essay that might, if things go well, end up in a scientific journal one day. Academically, I’m thriving. On paper, it looks like I’m doing everything right.

So why do I still feel like Sisyphus?

Because every step forward takes the strength of ten.
Because each achievement costs more than it should.
Because every morning feels like pushing the same boulder up the same hill—my body fighting me, my schedule swallowing me whole, my illness dragging behind me like extra gravity.

It’s not that I’m ungrateful. It’s not that I don’t see the opportunities I have or the things I’ve earned. It’s that progress for me is never just progress. It’s persistence in the face of something that never fully goes away.

I feel like Sisyphus because even when I climb, the weight rolls back. Maybe not all the way down, but enough to remind me that the hill is still there. Enough to make me start again tomorrow. Enough to make every victory bittersweet.

And yet, In a Camusian way, I keep pushing.
Because the work itself, the studying, the writing, the dreaming of becoming a psychologist, gives me purpose. Maybe meaning isn’t at the top of the hill. Maybe it’s in the climb I never stop making.