How To Never Grow Up
Be too old to be this stupid. Treat time like it’s nothing. Just a little toy for you to play with. Waste entire days sitting on lounge chairs with people who won’t ever mean a thing to you and feel the sun start to melt your brain. Melt, melt, melt faster, you idiot. This is fun. This is destroying yourself. The more bruises the better, right? If it didn’t hurt, it didn’t happen.
Treat love like it’s chewing gum. Spit it out, twirl it around your finger and stick it under the table. There’ll be more where that came from, I’m sure. I will never run out of love. It will always be there for me, ready for consumption, when I’m ready for it.
Find yourself on a subway platform waiting for somebody to notice you. You used to be the belle of the ball. Now you’re unfuckable. What happened? You became the worst version of yourself way before you thought you would. If only you weren’t so careless, if only you blew out the candle before leaving to go out, if only you learned how to properly do your taxes and go to the gym and buy produce at the farmers market. Maybe then people would still notice you. Maybe then you wouldn’t feel so left behind.
Curate your life perfectly on the Internet. Post a picture of yourself unscrewing a bottle of champagne in some nice apartment. Your hair looks nice. Your shoes are cute. You’re almost smiling. Someone could see this and easily assume that you’re alive and well. “Thank God I don’t have to worry about this person. They seem to be happy and living a healthy, productive life. They condition their hair, they go shopping for cute shoes and they have a social life that involves unscrewing a bottle of champagne in some rich person’s apartment!”
It’s so easy to trick people these days. It’s easier than ever. And you know what? People want to be tricked. They prefer it that way. Because if we really presented our lives accurately on the Internet, it would be so, so, so depressing. No one would ever go online again.
Start to sense that your inadequacies are no longer cute or quirky. When you tell an embarrassing story at brunch now, people don’t laugh and say, “OMG, me too!” They give you worried sympathetic looks and ask if you’re okay.
You are okay? You aren’t okay? The answer almost doesn’t even seem to matter anymore. People see what they want to see. You see what you want to see. No one is a reliable narrator.
All you know is that you want to get to a point where being “healthy” and “doing the right thing” doesn’t feel so unnatural. You see other people transitioning seamlessly and you wonder why you’re having such a hard time. You wonder why self-sabotage is still your best friend and you wonder why you sleep alone and you wonder and you wonder and you know what you get?
None of the answers, that’s for sure.