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Why Don't You Know?

This isn’t one of the good days. It’s not ideal, of course. Feeling awful and pretending otherwise is exhausting. I took a break today—or at least, that’s what I told myself. I informed them I wouldn’t be coming in for my assigned work.

But the truth is, I didn’t take a break. I lied. I didn’t go, but my mind stayed stuck on all the things that make me miserable. As a result, I feel even worse. But maybe I need to let myself fully feel what I’m feeling, no matter how much it annoys me. It won’t fade entirely, after all.

As vaguely as I can put it, it's a recurring pain. It will never stop. I can find ways to manage it, but it will always be there. Which is fine. I've learned to live with it—until I'm forced to live with it in classes, and everywhere I am, that is.

Turns out, it's in me, not the places I go and I can't stop meeting myself. 

Sometimes, this freedom I have feels more like a curse. I have time to find myself, but I don’t know what to do with it. It means facing the mirror and seeing more than just a pig with lipstick smeared on—because pigs aren’t ugly. It’s not about the face; it’s about everything else. Anything but the face.

Something that isn’t broken doesn’t need fixing. But being an adult—or whatever this is—means having to try and fix things you didn’t break in the first place. That’s the situation I find myself in now.

It’s weird, this thing called adulting. But I’m still a teen—nineteen. Time moves on without a care for me, and sometimes I love that. I’ve made peace with it now. But in ten minutes, right after I publish this, I’ll likely be terrified of time, of tomorrow.

There’s always so much to do when you have nothing in front of you. You’re in control now—the whole responsibility aspect of it—and that control feels heavy.

Uncertainty, I’ve been told, is fine. But it’s scarier now, feeling like it’s the one thing you can’t afford to be. You’re expected to live with purpose, in crazy specificity, and never admit you’re unsure about what to do. Your life was supposed to be planned out from A to Z, right?

No. It wasn’t. Things happen. You start realizing you have a say, and somehow, that makes everything even heavier.

The weight stays on my shoulders. I think I’ll devour it all. What else can I do with so much?

Maybe cardboard boxes are the solution. If I tape them up well enough, maybe they can stop time from passing. Maybe they can silence the questions too.



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