the useless, selfish pleasure in noting my age (known already) to my co-workers. i try not to, and would succeed, if it were not for those certain special moments.
they mention an artist or occasion – i frown.
‘before your time?’ they laugh, too casually. ’23! you’re so lucky!’
of course, they agree, your 20s are the worst.
‘except mine. my 20s were my best.’ ‘mine too.’
‘but we’re in the minority.’
and i don’t envy those younger than me. as golden and effervescent as my university years appear to me in the lamplight of home living, i know they were not quite so. they had their own misery, i know i have come out from that misery and shall not, cannot return.
i am better now, in many way – worse in others, but the change is irreversible, in so much as it cannot revert, it can only develop.
and yet my age, of which i brag and disdain, of the fact that i brag and disdain, makes me an obvious amateur.
i am like the sleeping passenger on a sinking cruise ship, waking from drunken slumber to a party finally, peacefully resigned to their icy fate and i am shrieking and crying, pulling panels from the ballroom for the saddest excuse of a raft you’ll never see.
23! i cry, palms aghast cheek like munch taught me. what do i do with my life? how do i make something of myself!
and they laugh, too casually.
‘you’ll figure it out’
and i almost want to believe them. i have fallen into every important thing i have ever done.
but the tap, by now, is surely dry. i have used up my strange luck and am looking out on an empty bottle ocean with nothing but the bloated corpses of who i was. they keep me afloat but will not swim with me.
do i swim out without them? is there land ahoy or just plastic supermasses? do i cling to my easy schedule of daydreaming, nightmares? will a ship come? will it see me in the water?
between the great dark void and the dead girl are my weekly schedules: read this, buy that, 1000 words for my novel (that line written and nothing else)
i am doing my wset level 2 this month and possibly nothing else.
i am one large glass of wine away from running away or never leaving ever,
but i’ll figure it out. im only 23. and the ocean is still on earth.