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  MEADOW

I start class at 8:00?  That’s crazy.  I’m 19.  Let me sleep.  Two more hours.  Let’s start class at 9:30.  Well, who says the real world doesn’t work like that?  Sure. Ok.  Got it.  But that’s not what I want.  I don’t want to be chained to a desk.  Live in a cubicle with shitty lighting and stinky carpets.  No fuckin thank you.  I’m supposed to work my butt off all through high school and college just to slam into the pavement of the real world? 

Is this not the real world?  It feels pretty real to me.  And I can’t deal.  Because it feels like everyone is striving for something. We’re fighting for a place, a position, a hold on something that exists somewhere out there.  But when we get there, at the end or wherever, there’s nothing.  Except desire.  Needing wanting craving.  Needing wanting craving.  Gnawing, gnawing, gnawing.  I’m getting eaten alive.   For what?

I’m so busy I don’t have time to get to know who I am.  What I want.   I mean, I know what I want.  And this is not it.   This is not it.  I don’t know. Could we just stop.  Could you just let me stop?  You are.  They are.  I’m feeling pushed into the abyss of bullshit. It’s incessant.  Except for the times when I jump out of the way, and they all stumble and fall flat on their faces because I’m the one who’s been holding them up.  I don’t know.  I am the expectation.  The hope. The voice of the future.  And I can’t even hear myself think.  I’m drowned out by everybody else’s need to speak.  To be seen.  It’s exhausting, so I’m taking myself out of the race. 

No, I don’t mean that.  I’m not depressed.  I’m pissed off.  Because I know there’s more than this.  And I want to go find out what that is.  Who I am.  And how I can contribute in a real way.  How can I have fun and joy and adventure?  And love?