Emptiness.
Hopelessness.
Those are the two emotions he felt, as he drove through the silent, dark night.
It was a Friday night, and the weekend was fully ahead of him. He could do whatever he pleased, or wanted. Yet, it is practically for this reason why he secretly dreaded it all the same. Sure, he would be free from his work, but that meant he would be free from his distractions, and would be forced to face his sense of hopelessness and despair yet again. It had almost become a weekly thing, to instill a false sense of hope and expectation that something, anything, could happen which would change his fate. Working hours on end during the week, expecting a different outcome during the weekend, pushing past the hard, gruesome work which he hated, along with most other aspects in his life. He rarely ever felt a sense of enjoyment in whatever it is that he would briefly occupy himself in doing, but rather he would feel either indifferent, or in the sense as one would feel scratching an itch.
He was completely detached and indifferent towards most possessions and circumstances that occurred in his life, all except for one thing. One thing which occupied most of his time, one specific thing that he cared most deeply and only about, one thing which superceded all other moments or events in his life. One thing that was more important and more precious to him than any other possession, status, wealth, or anything else the world could possibly offer him.
That damn show.
Ever since 2014, when he first discovered it, he was captivated. Ensared in its storytelling, and its brilliant ability to pull a viewer into a better, more vibrant, more magical, more alive world than the soulless and hopeless crushing reality that he was born into. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he fought against his better judgment, he could not stop thinking of the show, he could not stop forming an attachment to the characters and to the world itself. Every time something happened on the show, whether it be brilliantly beautiful or horribly devastating, he would shed tears, something which he's almost never done in his life. Through the show (and indeed, through the brilliant works of fiction that the fandom has created), he has experienced more emotion than he ever has in the real world. He knew it was dangerous, like a drug that shows you wonders and feelings beyond your greatest imagination, yet has the side effect of making the world seem ever more more hopeless and dull in comparison. At the same time, he was at a low point in his life, and it seemed to make things feel a little more hopeful in the world at that time, and stopped any suicidal thoughts just so he could watch the next episode and experience the next bit of fiction that would ever come next in that universe.
At the same time, he became less and less attached to whatever this world had to offer, and made it seem almost like a chore to convince himself to stay alive and do whatever needed to be done for himself. He tried everything he could to convince himself that Equestria was real, on some level. He discovered hypnosis around a little while after he found the show, and tried every way possible to listen to the audio files to try and make it feel real. It never happened aside from a slight feeling in his arms and legs. Later, he discovered Astral Projection, which people claimed you could use to travel to other places outside the body. He reminisced about how many times he tried it, always accomplishing a vague feeling of floating but never anything more.
And just when his hope was finally dying off, something new had to emerge in order to ensare him back into insanity. The Law of Attraction, and related works that could espouse that anything could happen, should he try hard enough to change his mindset, and his way of thinking. So try, try, and try he did day and night to keep attempting. When he was younger, he would be occupied by school and his work that needed to be done, and when he got home he would dream of the weekends and especially summer break when he convinced himself he would be able to finally have the time alone to himself in order to accomplish this goal. Time and time again, he consistently proved himself wrong, but that didn't change him, for he would try endlessly, as if there were no other option, as if life itself was dull enough to where he had become completely ensnared of the thinking that if he were to fail, he would be hopelessly trapped in a notion of this life, and everything he so despised, being as real as it could possibly get. An outcome he thought was very possible, but tried to convince himself otherwise in order to latch on to the small sliver of hope that he was wrong.
Seven years later, and the only thing that has changed is his circumstances. Instead of falsely pretending that he would be able to get to Equestria one day by whatever means necessary at school, he would do the same thing at work. Only now, he had less free time to try (and fail) at his goals, and instead overall had more time to endlessly hope for a different outcome by performing the same exact routine again, and again. In his pursuit for the impossible, he discovered a multitude of people who have claimed to be positively affected and have seen actual outcomes from the methods described, whether it be Astral Projection, Hypnosis, or even the Law of Attraction and the ability to "shift" to other realities. Eventually it turned him more resentful by the day. Did his mind hate him? Did people have to be predisposed to these type of abilities? Was it truly something with how malleable one's brain could be? The more questions he began to ask himself of this, the more he hated what possibilities he could come up with.
He had a few more options up his sleeve before he could get to the only possible remaining one, one of them being the ability to try and make his mind more malleable for himself. While being in the gray area of the legal zone, Research Chemical Psychedelics, (as well as Psychedelics in general) from what he could gather, have apparently been shown to give people more spiritual experiences on hand, even though they might exacerbate latent disorders and problems like Schizophrenia. But quite honestly, he would prefer to be a mental patient as opposed to being sane at this point if it means there would be a chance he could experience Equestria.
Snapping out of his thoughts, he felt a strange sense of comfort. Perhaps he was close to an answer and a method that would work, or perhaps he was far away or even not able to arrive at any method at all. At this point, there is no other sense except trying until it kills him. Even if it did nothing, he consistently imagined being with the pony he loved, in the world he loved, as a pony he himself felt like he might be. And he would be willing to accept even a painful death if it meant being in the home he felt more emotion, more connection to than anything he has ever experienced, seen, or felt in life.
He arrived home, opening the door and turning on the lights. Walking into his kitchen, feeling more tired than ever before, he stared at the kitchen knives. He shook his head and made his way into his bedroom where he thought of the knives, and of the pills inside his drawer, which contained more than enough to kill someone.
Maybe I'll save that for another day, just after I try a few more times, he thought.
In that moment, he felt childish and alone. Childish in the fact that he had a great place to live and access to food and water, that he had to get obsessed and emotional over what many claim to be a kid's show, and alone in that he feels stuck that he couldn't do anything about it, while it felt as if almost no other people felt the same way, and those that did have methods to cope or even get better from the situation they were in entirely.
As he went to bed, feeling tired, he slipped into the same mindset that he always did.
Maybe tonight I'll have a dream or lucid dream of ponies... He thought.
He likely knew that he would dream of nothing at all, like most of the time.