Peter parker 2

And so the decision was made.

After hours and days and months of inner conflict—of trying to break this mountain of doubt and fear with my bare hands—I made a choice.

I decided to leave this job and give my craft a chance.

As the fog was clearing, I smelled the burning aroma of anxiety replacing it, crawling in my body, waiting to destroy me from within.

I accepted it as an outcome. I knew the days ahead were filled with these feelings, and part of me accepted them as a lifelong companion.

No one really understood how scary that decision was for me.

Some thought, "Oh, he’s lazy. He doesn't wanna work."

Others didn’t see what I was seeing, and I came to peace with it.

I realized my vision was for me and me only; that I wasn’t an advertisement on a billboard for people to look at.

So the first few days after that decision were strange…

The workplace, the customers—it all became bittersweet.

I knew I was going to leave them.

They didn’t.

And that alone made me smile with a shaking heart.

Truth is, I wanted them to miss me.

I knew the customers were very fond of me, and I always took pride in being a shopkeeper.

And I knew I was going to miss it—

Miss smiling at them, helping them, standing up when a customer enters the shop, and many more things.

Days went by… and I’d think about her more often.

Now that I was leaving… I was going to move on from her too.

I never really told her how I felt. She never really allowed me.

Maybe to her, she was just a customer and I was just a shopkeeper;

To me, she was the keeper of my heart—and the key to that lock was swallowed by the ghost of our insecurities.

I felt the way she looked at me.

She felt the way my eyes lit up whenever she came.

But one day, she stopped coming.

And I was alone with the other 100 customers I had weekly.

"Peter Parker," I would call myself.

This… was one of the reasons for it.

I told my boss about my decision.

Although he was really sad, he didn’t say much.

Maybe he didn’t believe me.

To them, I was still the guy who wanted to quit a year ago too.

But this time was different.

I was different.

And so I kept doing what I had to do to pass the days.

Fifty-five days until my final day at this job.

It was around 9—one of those quiet days at the shop.

I was chatting with my friend, talking about films and games and… life.

Whenever I was on my phone, I would hold it in a position where I could see customers entering the shop.

I was tired that day, and it wasn’t busy, so I couldn’t keep my eyes on the door.

As I was typing and smiling at my phone… I heard it.

“Hi.”