Beep Beep Beep.
You're awake, and you're not happy. Your alarm tells you it's morning. Your nostrils flare and your back arcs as you smell... responsibilities. Feeling blue, you decide not to get out of bed. Let the clock tick over this time. You won't be missed. You weren't missed the last time. The room is locked and there's curtains in front of the window. Comfortable. Safe. An hour passes as you idle the time away. Then another. Nothing breaks the silence in the room. Nothing changes, save for the amount of brightness trying to shine through the curtains.
The lack of change unnerves you a little and you decide that showing up to where you were meant to be, even for a little while, would count for at least a partially successful day. Your four hooves touch the floor for the first time and you dress up. In the mirror, you see your equine reflection. Not bad, not bad at all, you think. Perhaps somebody will even be dazzled by you.
You trot out of your home and onto the streets. Other ponies are galloping about, minding their own business. Nopony gives you a second look. Very nice. Very quiet. In the bus station, you discover you arrived too late and the bus has gone. You'll arrive even later than you thought. A shame, but it was hardly your fault. Lost track of time, that's all. It happens. You make yourself comfortable on the bench and distract your mind with things you like.
Eventually, the bus does arrive and take you where you were meant to go. You feel a minor sense of elation, only to be deflated when you realise the place you were going to was the wrong place altogether. Oh no! Now what? You suppose there's nothing left to do, but turn around and go home again.
A smile forms on your muzzle at the thought - sure, you'd skipped out on all you were supposed to do today, but it was a series of mistakes that could've happened to anypony. Who could blame you for feeling blue or losing track of time or forgetting where you were supposed to be- wait. You see them.
Those are the ponies you were supposed to hang out with. And they're going to the place you were truly heading to! It can't be! Your satisfaction bleeds out as if from an open wound. But those ponies don't look like they need any help, do they? And you had missed out on so much today already, it would just create unnecessary questions if you were to turn up now. They'd look at you as if you were a slacker, rather than someone who might've just been sick that day.
That thought is the clincher. You hide from the ponies until they trot away to work, and take the next bus back to your home. But before you go straight back, you use whatever bits you have left over to buy some food. You'd been moving about so much today that you were getting hungry. As you leave the store, a pleasant evening chill has descended on Manehattan. The sky is dark and the atmosphere around the empty street is spooky and exciting. You could be doing something interesting here, like detective work or searching for treasure with Daring Doo.
But you're not. And you know you won't be doing it tomorrow or the day after either. You'll cheer the heroes, you'll gasp at the villains and you'll go about your day like all the other saggy-faced ponies you see. But you can't even say that, because you don't know them. That old pony there, with the rough grey mane and heavyset eyes, he looked like a criminal. The young mare with a poisonous green mane and red fur looked like she had a story or two to tell. You look at yourself. You look fine, maybe even slightly interesting. But as you stand there with your shopping bags, you realise that you're not really, are you?
All that you are is something that somepony birthed into being. Too afraid to die. Too afraid to live. To say the wrong thing or to get the wrong look. Because once you do, it's there forever. And they'll know not to ever rely on you specifically again. So you melt into the background and do what everyone else does. The background will always accept you, because it cannot judge.
You look up into the sky and see a shining north star. Beautiful, glinting, just like in a fairy tale! You could make a wish! I wish I could be different... no, you can't wish for that. Because you know you could be different. You're perfectly capable of changing your own life without outside interference.
All it takes is getting out of bed on time. The world is big and full of places to go to on your own four hooves. There is nothing stopping you.
So you turn away from the useless star and take your groceries home. You don't cook - too tiresome. Too much time spent not busying your mind with wonderful adventures written by ponies blessed with imagination. You eat and indulge as the hours pass by and your body grows ever more tired.
Drowsiness drowns out the emptiness, and you set the alarm clock for next day, and collapse onto the bed, pulling the covers on top of yourself, leaving one hoof sticking out so you don't get too hot. You grow still, waiting for the sleep to take you, but it doesn't. Not quite yet.
The thoughts come. Sometimes bad ones, but sometimes not. Sometimes, you remember that you're not the only pony who never grew up. The truth is that everyone are still colts and fillies. Some are mean and confident, some are meek and quiet. Many of them think they're big grown-ups who know how to live. That they always know what to do when faced with a problem. But that's a lie.
Not even the princess grew up. She had a quarrel with her sister and banished her to the moon for 1000 years! For all her power and might, she was a very sad little filly that night. Confidence is and always has been a show, a deception that ponies put on to feel better, or to make others feel better.
You had a bad day. You let ponies down. Again... and again. Many bad days. Countless bad days. But that alarm clock will still ring in a new morning, to tell you and every other pony to get out of bed. And tomorrow you will get out on time. And if not, then you'll do it tomorrow. Or tomorrow, or tomorrow. There is no background. I believe in you.
