and ultimately find yourself spending an increasing number of sleepless nights looking back, wondering
what happened
and
at which point
you
went
wrong.
You cannot quite put your finger on it, but the entire experience closely resembles what the others might call regret.
Where were all the parties, the countless, faceless, drunken co-eds waiting and willing to be taken to bed?
The expectation and the reality never seem to meet.
The books and movies have been so misleading.
All stories are lies, not to be trusted on some level.
Nothing is ever as good as you build it up to be in your head.
Nothing ever prepares you for this heartbreaking disappointment.
And maybe that’s the problem.
Now,
straddling
this line
between
two worlds,
with one leg
in childhood
and
the other
in the land of adults,
you’re faced with nothing
but the subtlety of regret.
One foot
past,
one foot
future,
while
the present is
fucking you
up the ass
because suddenly, there’s no more time remaining to make
bad decisions,
choices without
real consequences,
the free-bees,
the do-overs.
The time to say goodbye to what it truly means to be young has arrived, bursting through a window and not the door through which you were expecting.
The personal catastrophes you’ve been saving up for, experimentations with strange new drugs and multiple sexual partners have all been missed, some how, while you were
waiting,
stalling,
biding time.
Your designated “fuck-up years” have come and, just as quickly, have gone by without you even noticing.
Given the chance, what would you change?
Because, of course, now, life matters,
your choices affect the future,
and nothing you ever
secretly wanted
to do
can be
done.
Your choice was a path, the safe one, and you traveled down it, hoping all the while that something better, something far more exciting would stumble upon you.
Making no moves,
taking no risks,
you planned,
hoped,
and prayed
for the universe’s great revelation,
when the sky would open up at sunset and rearrange the cosmos of your pathetically bland existence
without you having to even so much
as lift
a finger.
Sure, you only chose this life out of spite towards parents, teachers, and everyone else whoever made the mistake of expecting anything other than banality from you.
You did it all,
though you’ll never admit it,
to yourself.
Patience is a weakness.
Expectation
versus
reality.
Coasting creates a trap,
this snare of misery tightening around your throat.