I have always been waiting.
Waiting for the bell to ring. Waiting for Friday to come. Waiting for the day when I can stop wasting my time waiting.
“Once I’m in high school…”
“Once I get my driver’s license…”
“Once I have my own house…”
What am I even waiting for anymore?
Truthfully, I’m not sure. I formulate hundreds of checklists of what I’m going to do with my life, and yet never check any boxes off. I have a scrapbook where I tell myself I will document all the escapades of my youth, yet the only documentation is empty pages and blank spaces.
There is temporary solace in the “Once I’s,” for a small moment. They almost make me feel like I’m in control. Never long-lasting comfort, just enough willful ignorance and forced oblivion to forget that I am doing nothing but sitting in my room, creating another daunting catalog of everything I could be doing. It keeps me awake at night. It creeps up on me when I’m sleeping, torturing me with its nagging reminder of all there is to be accomplished.
I have always had a bitter distaste for the saying “live while you’re young,” because it seems like my whole life, I have been waiting to grow older. I’ve been addicted to an endless race to grow up, running away from the very time I was told to savor. It is only now that I realize that I have nothing to memorialize, and nothing to treasure, just an endless bucket list in my head that will never get completed. I have made every chaotic list, every jumbled to-do, every tumultuous schedule, and yet I am still waiting for “the perfect moment.” And then I’m back to the “Once I” cycle.
The time on the clock floats away in the blink of an eye and I spend my time thinking about how I could be spending my time.
“Once I get this…”
“Once I go to college…”
“Once I grow up…”
Once I have strung this life out for all that it holds, will I even be satisfied? Or will this paranoia-inducing list just keep growing and growing, until the only thing I can remember is wishing I had more things to remember? The memories I dreamed of making when I was a young child drift past before my eyes as I fear I’ll never be ready, and the time will never be right, and life will pass me by without reaching me.
I don’t want to look back on blank scrapbooks.
I don’t want to look back on empty photo albums.
This agonizing cycle is a waste. There is no such thing as ready, only the present in front of me, a good time as any to create a life I’ll be content to look back on. The lists can wait. The Friday night football game chants in the student section, the late-night gas station runs for junk food, the highly-anticipated homecoming dance, and the plethora of memories to make will pass by one day, and I abstain from letting it all slip through my fingers like quicksand, sliding past me as I try to catch hold of it from afar. I refuse to let the anguishing “Once I’s” torment me any longer.
I am done waiting.
