21
It's just a number. It's JUST a number. Shame numbers mean so much to me, this one in particular. This number, which represents all the things I dread, which sends me to shivering with fear, which wrenches me out of my fear and throws me into a place of deep melancholy so that I almost wish the fear would return, this number... so powerful in its simplicity, stealthily inconspicuous so that not until it enters your bloodstream do you even see it for what it is - a death sentence. And a long, frightening time on death row. On hopeful days, when escape seems possible, the hours rush by, evading you, passing you, leaving you grasping at the air, desperately trying to catch even a moment. When it's darker inside though, it takes a painful eternity for the hands of the clock to change position. And that is far more terrifying. To think that I have so many years more adulthood to endure. How has it happened that the best part of our lives is so short?
Argh I really am talking shit right now. In short, I'm 21 today and not enjoying the feeling. Maybe in a while I'll come to terms with it, but for now it's depressing me and making me feel old and hopeless. Ha, I told myself when I was a child that I'd write a book by the time I was fifteen. That I'd create and invent and discover so much before I even hit adulthood. But here I am, to be considered an adult in every part of the world, and with nothing much to show for it.
I think, to enjoy your birthday, you have to believe that your previous year was valuable, and that the year of life that follows it will be successful and enjoyable. The past bore some fruit, even if it was the insubstantial spiritual kind that doesn't pay bills or make its imprint on any certificate. But the future is looking bleaker. My art, which years ago would have been considered good, now looks like the work of a child, and a tortured one at that. My music is unsophisticated and unskilled, and my writing grows less eloquent by the minute. Even as I type I sink deeper into my melancholia, noticing helplessly that I am not in control of my words. I used to write well, but these days my mind is too chaotic to even put a sentence together without worrying that it's awful.
Speaking of which, here's a question for you: What do you do when you feel you might be losing your mind? How do you know if you're going mad or if you're only now starting to see things the way you should? What should I make of a man with a long streamlined head and birds' eyes, who darts through the crevices in my psyche and just occasionally jumps out my eyes and shows himself as a two-dimensional figure on the pavement, in the textured bark of a tree, even on my skin! What to make of THAT? I can only hope he doesn't mean any harm, and that I can work out a way to make use of the creature. I thought about drawing it, and it still might be a good idea, but I worry that if I do, I'll open a door and let him out, free to wreak havoc however he pleases.
I am crazy, aren't I?
Anyway...
...Happy Birthday to me,
I'm eighteen-and-three...
Argh I really am talking shit right now. In short, I'm 21 today and not enjoying the feeling. Maybe in a while I'll come to terms with it, but for now it's depressing me and making me feel old and hopeless. Ha, I told myself when I was a child that I'd write a book by the time I was fifteen. That I'd create and invent and discover so much before I even hit adulthood. But here I am, to be considered an adult in every part of the world, and with nothing much to show for it.
I think, to enjoy your birthday, you have to believe that your previous year was valuable, and that the year of life that follows it will be successful and enjoyable. The past bore some fruit, even if it was the insubstantial spiritual kind that doesn't pay bills or make its imprint on any certificate. But the future is looking bleaker. My art, which years ago would have been considered good, now looks like the work of a child, and a tortured one at that. My music is unsophisticated and unskilled, and my writing grows less eloquent by the minute. Even as I type I sink deeper into my melancholia, noticing helplessly that I am not in control of my words. I used to write well, but these days my mind is too chaotic to even put a sentence together without worrying that it's awful.
Speaking of which, here's a question for you: What do you do when you feel you might be losing your mind? How do you know if you're going mad or if you're only now starting to see things the way you should? What should I make of a man with a long streamlined head and birds' eyes, who darts through the crevices in my psyche and just occasionally jumps out my eyes and shows himself as a two-dimensional figure on the pavement, in the textured bark of a tree, even on my skin! What to make of THAT? I can only hope he doesn't mean any harm, and that I can work out a way to make use of the creature. I thought about drawing it, and it still might be a good idea, but I worry that if I do, I'll open a door and let him out, free to wreak havoc however he pleases.
I am crazy, aren't I?
Anyway...
...Happy Birthday to me,
I'm eighteen-and-three...