There do not exist many instances in which one can claim to have reached a point of nirvana—if not at all. Of course, to this one finds the saying 'to each their own' very relatable: to each their own paradise, to each their own definition of paradise, and to each their own means of reaching the said paradise.

My definition of 'utopia' resembled a luxury available to many, but its impact and meaning was to me more than some momentary luxury. To understand its full extent, my routine is as follows:

Entering through a door I was only too familiar with, taking but a single step through and finding no hopeful, bright, glaring lights in any which way or form; all had become so typical that the word—in which I refer to 'typical'—became an understatement. Expected was a suffice replacement, as a matter of fact.

"How good of you to come home," a voice called loudly through the narrow hallway.

The greeting, which if it were instead a Chalice of Sarcasm would have been profusely overflowing, pierced coldly and vindictively through the empty shell of my body, so full of cracks it was held together by thin slivers of synthesized happiness.

The words said were delivered in a tone where retort was, aside from not recommended and rather unsatisfactory, more appropriately replaced with an ignorant silence that was really quite necessary.

Room after room, all barely the size of a small service elevator, each crusted in a stale layer of dust and dirt. Filth lay caked between the molded cracks of the floorboards, some in which insects had gladly made their homes in. A putrid stench of damp mold, cheap perfume, carbon monoxide and a smell I chose not to and fortunately could not place wafted thickly like a dense mist through the abused walls of the house.

In one room, there was loud yelling, smells of cigarette smoke, and the throwing of plastic discs everywhere. The next was the source of the sickeningly sweet perfume. Bright lights blaring—magenta, fuchsia, carmine—and the sound of some exhausted, rehearsed laughter like a record that had been played a thousand times over. An echoing of soft chuckles, high-pitched giggles, all that I diverted my eyes from. The memories made in there were unpleasant to no boundary, as I have experienced firsthand. A man emerged from the third room before I had even convinced myself to bring up my hand and knock.

"You're done early," he said, soft but sternly, eyeing me carefully.

"Yes, sir,"

"Here's your room key,"

You earn very little money doing what I do while trying to afford going to school.

He didn't ask why, or what; he simply handed me a key and returned to the room, dismissing me. With equal measures of ignorance, I walked up the creaking stairway.

Within the not-as-soothing-as-preferred comfort of my own room, I opened the laptop on my desk.

Its glowing screen and infinite world of fantasies were the only utopia I knew.