I don’t know what I’ll do when I grow up.
I don’t know what I’ll write, I don’t know what I’ll think, I don’t know how I’ll remember to eat or how I’ll wake up every morning and leave my bed or how I’ll have time in the mornings to make coffee.
Everything I look forward to, like complete independence and letting go of things on my own calendar, isn’t going to pan out. I just know it. I’m not going to turn 23 and magically grow the resolve to be better; I will just be an older version of my current shortcomings.
Today, I overslept and showed up two hours late, but when I grow up, I’d have been fired. I oversleep a lot.
A few days ago, I somehow burnt mac and cheese. I still find the incompetence kind of funny, but how will I manage to feed myself?
I make so many mistakes with the ability to fall back on my naivety, but how will I excuse my inadequacy when I’m 30 years old and I mess something up to its breaking point?
Right now, I live month to month, and even that is too much. I’m forgetful and often a failure and generally futile at everything.
Will I even have time to waste?
All my favorite things will be gone, and I know I’ll have new favorite things, but it’s hard to convince myself that they’ll be as good. Everything that defines my life right now is specifically for now: volleyball, figure skating with my oldest friends, driving to school, high school itself, The Central Trend, and the people I surround myself with. Pretty much everything I have is on a deadline, set to expire in May of 2026.
The bottom line: it’s really weird to think about all the life I have left after this.
All the parties, all the summers, all the porch swing conversations and lattes I will taste. There’s so much out there, but my world feels so small.
The things I write, the things that occupy my thoughts, the things ahead of me: minute in the grand scheme.
It’s youth, then high school, then college, and then the rest. It feels like my whole life is these four eras, of which I’m essentially halfway through.
But the things that feel like life to me—laughter and heartache and favorite songs—those don’t end like the eras do. I hope.
There’s just no way of knowing, no real promise of joy. No real promise of anything; it’s all a gamble, a prayer, a dream.
Everything comes down to hope, I guess.
I hope life will slow down, and I’ll find time in the places I forgot existed.
I will acknowledge that I’ve been succeeding at appreciating and living in the present. But that only goes so far, only works for so long, until all the serene waves crash and clash with the future and its accompanying fears.
I hope I’ll figure out how to live, how to be happy, when it’s all different.
