What if I ain't no violinist?

140. Twoset Tweeter

It happened gradually. So gradual, it went on unnoticed for quite some time, before it was almost too late.

Brett hated his job.

It was meant to be a boring 9 to 5 job. Brett would've been okay with that. He would've been fine with resorting to "selling" 8 hours of his day to a company in exchange for a salary, then spend the remainder of his day for himself.

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way at all. His job was stressful with no escape. He was harassed by his boss all throughout the day with no support from his colleagues who kept dumping their work onto Brett to complete. He was told he had to stay late in the office to finish up what he couldn't finish because he was the one who kept stuffing things up, which meant he had no time to do something fun for himself after work.

Brett realised he had since lost contact with his friends. He had not updated his Instagram account for months. It's been forever since he had done any fun activities or gone out to a nice café or restaurant where he could take a photo and share it. He had not had an Instagrammable moment in ages.

One day he remembered he also had a Twitter account that he nowadays rarely used. He decided to tweet what he was feeling;

"I wanna quit my job."

Within minutes, a number "1" appeared next to the speech bubble symbol. Someone had replied to his tweet.

Brett tapped his screen to read the reply.

"You will be okay."

Brett clicked on the person who replied to him. It was one of his followers but the profile page hardly had any information. This person wasn't an active Tweeter either. It could've been just about any random person who had decided to follow him ages ago.

The next day Brett returned home from his job he hated and tweeted again;

"I wanna quit my job."

Again, he received a response within minutes.

"You will be okay."

Brett continued to tap out and tweet the same thing every day. He kept receiving the same response back that he would be okay. As the days progressed, the response time for receiving these messages became shorter and shorter. Brett would tweet that he wanted to quit his job and he would now receive a reply almost immediately.

Brett felt terrible for becoming an attention seeker like this. Yet he couldn't stop. Just knowing there was someone out there that cared about him enough to respond to his tweets so promptly gave Brett relief. He was realising it may be the only thing that kept him going.

Before long, Brett came to the realisation that not only he had run out of time to do things, he had run out of zest for life. He was now running on empty.

In his darkest moments, Brett tweeted;

"This is too much, I just want to end it all."

His eyes glazed over as he tapped the blue "tweet" button. He sat still, alone in his living room with this phone in his trembling hands, tears running down his face as he desperately waited for a response.

He still wanted to be rescued. He thought, no one really wants to end things. All he wanted was the void and pain to go away. It's just that he felt there was no alternative left. But really, what he really wanted was to feel connected to this world in some shape or form. Any shape or form.

Please.. please..

He was startled by a knock on his door.

He got up and staggered over to answer it.

"...Who is it?"

"Brett! It's Eddy Chen, I went to uni with you."

"..Eddy..?"

Brett opened the door and gazed up at the tall young man with flushed cheeks, all sweaty and panting.

"..Eddy? It's been like what, 10 years? I haven't seen you since uni..."

Before Brett could finish his sentence, Eddy hugged Brett and whispered into his ear.

"You will be okay."

Brett clung onto Eddy as he felt connected and tethered to this world through something tangible for the first time in ages.