ACT YOUR AGE

Image from the movie Cooley High (1975)

Take it easy on your graduates. They have enough pressure figuring out a world that's not prepared for them

Made it to eighteen!

That's the American dream, if you're lucky enough to survive the cycle. Repeat days, learning from and about people who don't care about you. Talking to people feels like a fire alarm is going off in my brain. Like someone pulled the trigger on a starter pistol. My mind and tongue are off somewhere stumbling through the message my so-called "wise" parents passed on.

I think about being a parent myself. Would I keep a youthful desire to be the best at everything? Or think trying that hard makes you fall short. It's a costly disappointment, and you don't even see yourself passing it on. Maybe you were too busy running from your own past to keep up with what your kids really wanted.

So, you gave what you felt they needed.

You needed to hurt someone, like a man ready to get bread by any means necessary, when birth of new bills bought a reckoning. Being both destructive and constructive. Saying sorry felt like begging for forgiveness. A wasted plea in a world that only forgives the worst and moves faster than a cheater afraid to face the pain he spread.

We accept distractions like abuse, saying we hate it, then run back because it seduces us to say, "right now I'm glad I didn't make it." Whips us worse than an addict.

I still think about what I didn't accomplish. That doesn't mean I can't, but the doubt from believing those words became the blueprint for roads not taken. For potential I trained my slow-moving carefree self to run from. Playing more than I slept, until sleeping was my only commitment. And procrastination was my favorite game to master.

My age is mature rage. I hold my pain. I implode. I ruin. I rebuild. Showing ownership and responsibility is worthless, now a days anyways. Everything and everyone’s for sale.

Fuck. Fuck. Fucking shit. Fuuuuuuuuck.

Damn.

This is why they say men act like boys. My Nana used to say, "The older men get, the dumber they act." That's also because women jump on their backs for the biggest nuts.

My childhood is gone. I wish I could go back. Make some changes. Quick. Take some things more serious. School, my grades, lessons from my annoying parents. Maybe read a little more, because this angry know-it-all thing doesn’t really help me against calm adults who know better and use their anger in silence to focus and produce results.

They say, that's the business of wisemen.

I want to go back because I would spend more time among them. Those were the people I wished were my parents.

Now it's up to me. All I have to compare is broke behavior, and suddenly, I'm a teenage savior. Supposed to create a miracle life. Be super at things I was never taught—mostly because I ignored lectures about things from people I thought I would naturally be better than. Adults seem so boring. Part time users. Full time workers, successful at never moving past what’s blocking them.

OK world. Here I come.

Here’s my positive anecdote for facing the unknown.

Keep dreaming. Use ambition to get your days right, so the only nightmare left is returning to your former life.

To all the Father's wondering "HOW THE FUCK DO I DO THIS?"

My advice is Just Don't Pull Out!