DON’T TELL ME I’LL KNOW THE ANSWER WHEN I’M OLDER

i’m tired of being told by people who have the same problems as me that it’ll get better with age. i’m not as young as you think i am and things haven’t improved for you just because you are 29. are you saying that i alone will figure out what you and your friends couldn’t by then? or are you telling me this because you don’t know what else to offer? maybe at one point we were 7 and 16 but now we are in the grass at the park together seeing eye to eye. tell me again how i’ll feel better when i get older and maybe it’ll give you back the power that escaped you when you realized that i know everything you feel. from all these years away and from these few feet between, i can see you.

i tell myself that sometimes, though. i do. i say that when i am older it will be easier and i will have all the answers and i will feel safe and i wont be so tired all the time. but everyone i know who is older than me is in debt and suicidal and addicted and embarrassed… i know i’m an exceptional person, but i’m not exceptional enough to break the curse. i’m exceptional enough to get to be the youngest link in the chain, to enter the rooms with these older people who have been everywhere and have all the secrets, but they’re all just as sad and disgusting as me and that’s why they let me in. not because i’m some wunderkind ceo, not because we get together and talk about the magic weights you can lift that give you $10,000, not because we all know about the amalfi coast, but because they know that i know how bad it is and always will be. even the ones who are relatively rich and relatively famous are sad too, but at least they aren’t being sued by their credit card companies like some others i know. that’s really the only difference.

i love these people and they love me but in the dark days where i scream out IF IT CAN’T BE DEATH LET IT BE THE FUTURE, i cycle through my bleak rolodex of references and have to drag myself back down to earth, to the present, to the dream of death right here and over there and stretching against the walls and growing up through the cracks in the sidewalks and wrapping around my ankles. i’m sure i have things to look forward to and i’m sure they do too, but nobody seems to look forward at all, just down.

we all know it’s bad, i just have more of it. everyone’s done what i’m doing already and hated that and they hate what they’re doing right now too and i have to wait around for both. if i stay alive the way i’m supposed to, so as not to inconvenience anyone further, so as not to make anyones complicated life more fucking complicated, i have so much to trudge through. the path i must embark upon has been paved poorly and everyone tells me all the time that they really don’t like the way it feels under their feet. don’t tell me i’ll know better when i’m older. you don’t have a clue and we both live in hell.