It is almost 2 am, I am a few days over twenty seven, and this thought has just hit me hard, like a fat brick in the chest:
I am 70% through my twenties, ‘the best decade of your life’ they call it, and I do not feel like I’ve lived.
I mean of course I’m a living, breathing specimen with a job and dreams and people I care about. But I’ve not lived.
And if I’ve not lived, what have I done? Where have the last seven years of my life gone? How did they go by so fast? And if I don’t fix the way I’m living, I’ll soon be fifty wondering the exact same thing, except I’ll be decades older.
I used to have dreams. I used to feel like I mattered, in my own small way. Now I can count the people I care about on the fingers of my right hand, and I spend everyday thinking about frivolous things as I pour my energy into them.
I used to believe in the power of art, in the power of words. Now I feel washed out, and frankly, disenchanted. Does anything matter? The words echo in my head and more often than not the answer comes back to be a tired, heavy ‘no’.
I had big plans, I wanted to be someone. I believed I wasn’t mediocre, that I was meant for big things. I had all the reasons in the world to doubt myself then, because what did this naïve college grad really know? And today, I know so much more. I’m actually a pretty smart individual. And yet, where is that fire? Where is that vision? Why do I continue being my own worst enemy?
I can tell myself that the idea of age and time as we treat it is arbitrary and man made and it doesn’t even matter, but all I keep thinking about is how much I’ve missed. How much life has slipped through my fingers without me even knowing it. So many mistakes I could have made. So many laughs I could have laughed and tears I could have shed. I could have met so many people, seen so many places, written so many words.
And now I can’t go back. I can’t redo those years. I can’t bring back what was lost. Its all melted and seeped into a dark abyss.
How many more summers do I have? How many days of warm sunlight and a warmer heart? How many days of seeing the sea and laying curled up in my bed reading a book?
All this makes me want to run away somewhere and never come back; all this makes me want to just do things that I hold meaningful, things that make me feel happy. Not spreadsheets. Not feeling upset about people who never cared. Not feeling anxious and questioning my next move.
I just want to make everyday count. That’s all. And in the end, if I’m not famous, or popular, or rich, it’s okay. If I made everyday count. If I spent everyday doing things that mattered to me, things that made me feel alive, I would know I’d lived a life.
photo credit: Beauiful Bizarre Magazine
The Ephemeral Melancholy 