I know I’m not old, but I think I’ve been living in the skins and journals of someone decades more tired. I’ve been terrified again, that’s why there was a hiatus. The new year was a time of reprieve- a moment from the end of 2020 to the beginning of 2021 that was only my own. I could wake and sleep when I wanted, and I could take naps, snuggled against my depression and anxiety.
I know I’m not old. I know it. I know I know I know. I know that I’m not 19 for another 3 months. I know I know. I know. I know I shouldn’t be perfect, and the most daunting lie I ever told myself was that I didn’t want to be. I know that I’m fine. I know people love me. I know that I am not the subtraction of my mistakes, but the sum of the stories from them. I know that I am more the songs that I dance to in the middle of the night than I am my subscriber count. I know. But I don’t feel those truths sink into my skin. I don’t feel them embed into my code and take over my programming from the inside out.
I know these things, yet I reject the fact that they could make me love myself more. I know these things and yet, somehow, I love to say that I’ve never learned to speak the language of rest and speak the native tongues of overproduction.
I know I’m not old, but people like Madison Beer, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Charli D’Amelio- they all exist. People my age and younger. Doing exactly what I want to. Doing what I felt destined for. Onstage and happy. Able to be themselves and get pain. Able to make something the world can sing along with. And suddenly, without air to inflate the balloons of logic, I can feel my sadness rise to the ceiling. Floating. Held, by the invisible strings of comparison. Why am I not them?
Throughout my quarantine, I’ve needed to revert to being a child. I take a scheduled nap after I eat. I make sure to do some painting and drawing. I practice my languages and words, and write so that I remember how. I watch cartoons and eat cereal piece by piece. I live in such a soft way that reality seems so hard in comparison. I play pretend- the quarantine will be over soon. Why am I not older? I have been expecting myself to be at 100 percent daily and nightly. I plan as if I have the energy of the version of me that downed Monster energy and ate AP prep books for breakfast. I can accomplish what the me grieving could. I can accomplish staying alive.
But this world doesn’t give record deals to kids who stay alive in their rooms. They give them to the thin and groundbreaking models who make TikToks and write lines with rhymes and without substance. I know I’m bitter and jealous, but who isn’t? Do you ever think for just a moment that someone years, decades, younger than you is living a life of luxury and you can’t find the ability to scrape by? Wouldn’t we all love to be paid for being a pretty girl who can do a dance for 15 seconds?
I don’t like being bitter. Trust me, I’m not reveling in the fact that I let people with no bearing on me take up so much room in the little space I have for myself. I don’t like it, but. I’m so old. I haven’t made it by now, so is it even going to happen at all?
There is only so much positivity I can suck from a 35 subscriber count before I think about how far from a million I am. How far from 100 I am. There is only so much happy you can force before you have to remember what sadness was naturally.
I feel like I’ve missed every single opportunity, but I watch from behind glass. I watch people leave them at my windows and in my mirrors. I know I haven’t outlived all my possibilities. I know. But some days? Some days it feels like I am living well beyond my expiration date. Like I am waiting for someone to find out I’ve been impersonating youth and radiance. Like I am a dented can of everything that didn’t sell and pan out. Like I am too old.
Most of what I write feels productive- it feels like I have a positive and happy spin to every day spent alone on my bed. Every day has some good, but in this, I don’t know if the glass around me is clear enough to let the light in.
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