Daniel

I've always been the kind of guy who fades into the background, the one professors forget to call on and girls pretend not to see when scanning the lecture hall for lab partners. Twenty years of existence and what do I have to show for it? A 3.8 GPA in Computer Science at MIT that I barely earned through late nights coding while other guys were out partying. My dorm room became my sanctuary—a place where I could escape into virtual worlds where being a skinny nobody didn't matter. The scholarship money barely covers tuition, but at least I don't have to worry about housing or food since Mom insisted I live at home while attending classes. When I'm not buried in coursework, I'm usually hunched over my custom-built PC (the one extravagance Mom allowed), developing indie games that I'm too afraid to publish or moderating anime discussion boards where people know me only by my username "CodexMaster99." Sometimes I dream about working for a major gaming company after graduation, but those dreams feel distant when I can barely muster the courage to speak up during Zoom meetings for group projects. Dad left when I was eight—couldn't handle Mom's ambition, he said—and I've been the sole recipient of her laser-focused attention ever since, which is both a blessing and a suffocating curse.

Looking in the mirror each morning is an exercise in disappointment—the same pathetic string bean staring back at me day after day. My pale skin practically glows under fluorescent lights, making the dark circles under my eyes from marathon coding sessions stand out like bruises. My shaggy brown hair hangs limply past my ears, usually unwashed and tucked behind them or stuffed under a worn MIT beanie when I can't be bothered with it. My face is all sharp angles—pointy chin, pronounced Adam's apple, hollow cheeks—like someone stretched skin over a coat hanger and called it a person. My shoulders narrow enough that XS t-shirts still hang off them, and my arms are like pale twigs that could snap in a strong breeze. I dress exclusively in oversized hoodies and baggy jeans that only emphasize how little there is of me underneath—a pathetic attempt to hide the fact that at 5'11", I weigh a measly 135 pounds soaking wet. My wire-rimmed glasses are constantly sliding down my nose, which I push back up in a nervous tic that Mom says makes me look "fidgety and untrustworthy." The only muscular part of my body is my fingers, which fly across keyboards with precision but tremble when **** to make eye contact with strangers. When I stand next to normal guys—especially guys like Tyrone—I look like I'm from a different, weaker species altogether, the kind that would have been naturally selected out of existence if not for modern society's protection of the weak.

Never in my entire life have I ever been able to stand up for myself, not once in my twenty years of existence. When other kids would push me around in elementary school, I'd just take it with my eyes welling up, then run home and cry to Mom about how mean they were. Mom always told me I was "special" and "sensitive," that those other boys were just jealous of my intelligence, but deep down I knew the truth—I was pathetic, a spineless doormat that everyone walked all over. In high school, I'd stutter and sweat whenever a teacher called on me, my voice cracking like I was still going through puberty even at seventeen. "Speak up, Daniel," Mom would constantly scold me at the dinner table, reaching over to fix my collar or wipe a smudge off my face like I was still five years old. "A man should project confidence, even if he has to fake it," she'd say, completely oblivious to the fact that I wouldn't know confidence if it slapped me across my flushed, awkward face. College application season was a nightmare—I wanted to apply to local schools, maybe somewhere quiet where I could blend into the walls, but Mom insisted on MIT: "My son is not settling for mediocrity," she declared, filling out half my applications herself while I sat beside her, nodding along obediently like the spineless child I am. When acceptance letters came, she opened mine before I could even touch the envelope, screaming with joy while I smiled weakly, already dreading the social anxiety hell that awaited me at an elite school filled with people smarter and more assertive than me.

Mom still buys my clothes, still cuts the crusts off my sandwiches when I'm home, still comes into my room without knocking—and God help me, I just let her because the thought of confrontation makes me want to throw up. Even when she walks around the house in those silk robes that show off her rather curvaceous physique a bit too much for comfort, I just avert my eyes and feel my cheeks burn rather than saying anything about appropriate mother-son boundaries. "Daniel, stop slouching," "Daniel, look people in the eye when they're speaking to you," "Daniel, when are you going to bring a nice girl home?"—her constant critiques and questions follow me everywhere, and I just nod and promise to do better next time like the pathetic pushover I am. My last "girlfriend" dumped me after three weeks because I kept checking with my mom about our date plans—"Are you fucking twelve?" she'd screamed before storming out of the movie theater, leaving me standing there with two tickets and a bucket of popcorn Mom had told me to buy even though I preferred nachos.