Psychological Pressure
From a psychological perspective, pressure is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from demanding circumstances. In an academic context, it often manifests as a crushing sense of responsibility to meet or exceed high expectations, which can be internal (perfectionism) or external (parental, societal). This can lead a person to conflate their self-worth with their performance, making a perceived failure feel like an indictment of their entire being. When the pressure becomes unbearable, it can cause a person to feel that escape is the only option, leading to a profound sense of isolation and a desperate search for an end to the struggle.
Prae's POV
The day began like every other, with a schedule. Not just a mental note, but a precise, color-coded whiteboard mounted above my desk. The hours were carved into neat boxes, each task a command I couldn't afford to ignore.
6:00 AM: Wake up.
6:15 AM: Review Mathayom 5 Calculus notes.
7:00 AM: Breakfast.
7:30 AM: Leave for school.
My schedule was my fortress. It is a carefully built wall against the chaos threatening to pull me under. Without it, everything would dissolve into noise, and I would be lost. It was the only thing that made sense.
"Praew, are you ready for the day?" My mother's voice drifted in from the kitchen, calm, almost musical, but with an undercurrent of steel. She never yelled, never needed to. Her expectations hovered around me like a second shadow, always present.
"Yes, Mae," I answered without looking up, my voice flat and rehearsed. I ran a final check on my bag: textbooks, notebooks, sharpened pencils, and a calculator with fresh batteries. The physics test today was important, but really, every test was important. I was the top student, not just in my class but in my year. My grades weren't just mine. They were my parents' pride, my family's legacy. They were my identity.
At breakfast, my mother placed a bowl of rice soup in front of me, then sat down with her own coffee. "I was talking to Auntie Ladda last night," she said, stirring her cup slowly, "Her daughter, Ploy, is applying to medical school this year. Perfect GPA, you know."
I nodded, keeping my gaze on the steam curling from my bowl. "I know. She's also the best in the province."
My mother smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Of course. But her mother says she's also a very talented pianist. She plays Chopin's Nocturnes perfectly. I told her you were taking lessons again."
The words hit like a sharp stone in my stomach. The "lessons" were another item on my schedule, an hour I carved out from my calculus review to appease my parents' endless list of what I should be. My fingers, still sore from last night's late-night cram session, felt heavy just thinking about the piano. I had no talent. I had only the schedule.
"I'm tired, Mae," I said quietly, but I didn't look up. It wasn't really a complaint. It was a fact.
She didn't answer. Instead, she sipped her coffee and moved on to another topic, as if my fatigue were an invisible thread she chose not to pull.
At school, pressure was a constant hum, a background noise I had learned to ignore but never truly escape. My classmates looked up to me, their eyes full of silent awe. This is the girl who always had the answers, the one who never faltered. They asked for help, for notes, for secrets.
My secret was simple: there was no room for error. No room for distraction, for weakness, for a single misstep. The slightest deviation from my schedule felt like falling from a great height with no safety net.
During the physics test, I moved with cold precision, each formula and equation flowing easily through my mind, until the last question. A multiple-choice problem on quantum mechanics. It was ambiguous; each option plausible. My mind, usually a finely tuned machine, seized up. I hesitated, and then made the choice that felt most logical. But a crack appeared, a sliver of doubt, a hairline fracture in my carefully constructed fortress.
I handed in the test, feeling its weight like a stone in my hands. Cold dread washed over me. Not for the grade, that was just a number. But for the perfect score.
After school, I went to the library, my sanctuary, a quiet corner where time slowed. I had to wait for my mother to pick me up, so I opened my textbook, but my mind was elsewhere, spinning. What if I got that last question wrong? The thought was poison. A single wrong answer would be a blemish on my record, a stain on my perfect facade.
I could already see my mother's quiet, proud smile twisting into something else, a slight frown, a crack in the image she wanted to hold onto. I would no longer be Ploy, the girl with the perfect GPA. I would be Prae, the girl who failed.
It was during this silent panic that I saw the post. It wasn't a flashy ad, not something meant to catch everyone's eye. It hid in the darker, quieter corners of a social media site, a place I rarely visited.
The image was a starless night sky, empty and vast, a void that mirrored how I felt inside. The text wasn't about hope, or success, or happiness. It was selling a place to land.
It spoke to my pressure. It is not my sadness. To the part of me that feared being a lone asteroid, drifting endlessly in a cold, uncaring universe. It spoke to the part of me that had seen the beautiful emptiness of the cosmos and felt a grim kinship.
I read the words over and over. They weren't a cry for help. They were confirmation.
If I were no longer perfect... what was I?
The answer was simple. I was a failure.
My fingers moved without thought, clicking the DM button. No emoji, no desperate plea. I sent a report, clinical, cold, a summary of my life's trajectory, and the one flaw newly introduced into the equation.
I have failed the Mathayom 5 final exam. I have disappointed my parents. I see no other option.
The words were facts. The final line in my proof.
The Starlight Society was not a place to get better. It was the logical next step.
Lesson on Psychological Pressure
In the end, this is the lesson of psychological pressure: it is a cage forged from other people's expectations and your own perfectionism. It doesn't just drive you to succeed; it terrifies you with the thought of failure.
For me, the ad wasn't a cry for help. It was a final, logical solution to a problem I could no longer solve. I didn't want a way out of the cage. I wanted a way to end the struggle of being trapped inside it.
The club was not a beacon of hope. It was the inevitable conclusion to a life that had become an unbearable equation. The silence of my parents' expectations was a thousand times louder than a scream, and the pressure it created was a slow, deliberate killer.