#still in my fuck around era and very far from my find out era

[pencil-to-paper]

leaving

You’ve never been good with endings

Your eyes well up before you even press play on the episode titled ‘finale’

Your heart plummets when bold letters at the top of the page spell out ‘epilogue’

And every event comes in a 2-for-1 package deal with a countdown to the end, the ticking drowning out good experiences before they get the chance to become good memories

Just the word ‘last’ is enough to rattle you, it’s a good thing you’ve almost never know the difference between ‘goodbye’ and ‘see you later’ until it was too late for tears to blur your final look at the people and places you used to know

Letting go has never been your specialty, and there’s no solace in it, so you ignore the endings and the pain, turning to what comes next in an attempt to find some semblance of comfort

You try to appreciate the latch unlocking in front of you, but it’s hard to be grateful when you heart is still jammed in the hinges behind you

And as for what the latch will reveal, that’s unfortunately up to you

You want to figure things out, but you’re indecisive and collect regrets like grandmas with plastic bags, so you make padlets and pinterest boards and imagine your dream life every night in bed

Because if you start hoping now, if you want something for long enough, you know you really want it, even if the house and pets and stress-free living you fantasize about might be just that, a fantasy.

You’re still in denial about it, because without that fantasy, there’s not much left

The internet tells you that your brain finishes developing at 25, but the 25 year olds tell you that they don’t have a clue, everyone’s just making it up as they go, and the 30 and 40 and 80 year olds tell you, “it’s true, we don’t know either”

But you want to know, want to feel it in your soul that you’re doing things right and you have goals you’re achieving

You’re young, 25 is years away and you don’t want to put your life on hold while you wait for your brain to finish figuring itself out

You don’t even know what you’d do all those years, you just know you weren’t supposed to make it past 13, so of course you didn’t plan for 14 or 15 or 18 or 25, and every day throbs with the question of what now?

You read those articles about people who graduated in their 50s or started a business in their 60s, they say “here’s proof you don’t need to rush!” and “I only found myself after I retired”,  but all you hear is “there is a chance you will spend the rest of your life feeling lost”

When the past and the future are equally hostile, you turn to the one thing left, the present 

Stretch this moment out as long as possible, if you claim that you’re being “mindful”, you can ignore the fact that the clock doesn’t stop

By chance or by choice, you don’t notice everything ending around you.

By chance because when you’re busy writing, there doesn’t have to be a world beyond your earbuds

By choice because right now, even as your hand cramps and letters blur together, you can’t bring yourself to to write the last word.

As stupid as it sounds, your worst fear might just be the period at the end of the sentence

Or maybe it’s whatever word comes after