I spent my life in a cocoon that i had weaved around me, divorced from the reality, and i was under the illusion that i could spend my whole life like that. I shut my parents and other people out, because i thought that the world they spoke of no longer existed, that my challenges of survival were different from theirs, more intellectual. I saw their hard work, their sacrifices with disdain, with a sense of absurdity. They didn't make any sense to me, because they were out of place in my cocoon-universe. And now, the cocoon is breaking. Reality is flowing in through the holes, its noxious air pungent to my ill-immune senses. My world is breaking down, and it scares me that the world is not what i thought it was. That all my grand ideas have made me debilitated and unsuited to function in the practical world. I can give up everything that i have ever believed in, forsake my dreams and ideals, and live on with an unending sense of defeat. Or i can persist in my vision, hoping to turn