Repetition

I wish it was the Unwound album.

People characterize youth as a time of spontaneity. Kids are rambunctious, teens are reckless, college students are careless. Every action seems to lack any sort of order. In reality, it’s the opposite. Youth is about repeating the same thing over and over, indefinitely, with no clear purpose.

I go to school for 12 years. My attendance is spotty at times, but mostly clean. I make very good grades; my teachers respect me. I don’t really speak to anybody, and nobody speaks to me. Live and let live. Everyone tells me I should go to college, every day. Even I’m telling myself that I should go to college, every day. After all, what other option is there? A trade? God knows how bad that’d go.

I go home each day and speak to my mother. Dad’s out of town for work; he’s only here on weekends. And every day I have the same conversations. The same arguments, about how I’m ungrateful or how I’m selfish or how I’ve “changed,” because I reached an age where I started questioning her actions. I don’t think I’ve ever had a so-called discussion with her that wasn’t her complaining about someone else. But that was normal, and we did it every day.

Then, for a brief period, something happens. My living situation changes, my family dynamics are permanently shifted. These aren’t the everyday happenings, and it’s got me excited. Worried, uncertain, but excited nonetheless. But then everything simmers down, and I’m back to doing the same thing every day.

And I never really thought about it during that time. I didn’t have any goals in mind or ambitious aspirations. Every day was the same, and that’s how I acted. I lived in the present, but found comfort in pretending I was living in the future, despite not knowing what that future even was. Was damn good at it too. Nobody did “same-life over and over” better than me.

You go to college. Didn’t get accepted by your first choice—you had zero extracurriculars, so those good grades don’t matter, dum-dum. Eh, it happens. The runner-up isn’t bad, you can just do it for a year or two then transfer. And you do. You do the same thing every day, so you can do the same thing every day somewhere else. But it’s starting to hit you. This is the nature of your life. It always has been, and at this rate always will be. Regress socially significantly by year two. You don’t even want to speak to anybody anymore. But you limp to the finish line.

You transfer to your first choice, Where The Big Boys Play. In spite of yourself, you’ve achieved the dream. You get to do the same thing every day in the best place imaginable. And it’s so good that you hate every second of it, because by now your childish mindset has consumed you. Childish by the definitions of others, but also by your own. You realize fully that this will be your life, and then you’ll have a slightly different life that will last far longer and seem the least appealing. And even if you run away, and hide in your room and try to rot away, you’ll still be falling in the same pits. Because you’ll be doing the same thing every day.

But you’re still childish, so you do it anyway. But you start to dream of another future. A distant vision that runs parallel to your own, but you just can’t seem to grasp it. Or rather, you can reach out and feel it against your skin, but you can’t close your fist around it. It makes you feel physically unwell, but you start to know what to do.

I want every day of my youth—what’s left of it—to mean something. To feel like it means something. I want every day of my life to be different than the last. I want to live in the present, and I want the present to feel worth living in. I want to be selfish and greedy. I want to put my own interests first, instead of building towards a future that feels nonsensical. One that only exists to be a fail-safe, or a status bar, or a talking stick, or a notebook paper crayon drawing you hang on the fridge. The only thing that matters in life is your own youth, and you’ll damn yourself every day if you waste it.