Involuntary Maturity

Really, who the hell were we three years ago?
I was an intensity chaser, desperate to wrap my fingers around the tail of the good life no matter how much the backlash whipped my ass. I was the firm opposite of anything I opposed, proudly wearing my differences as though they were sunglasses that marked me as an individual, ignorant to the blinding effect they had on the more important aspects of life. Foolish and an idiot, though that’s mainly to be expected, and set on proving that age was just a number.
Every chain of smoke I gasped added a year onto my maturity and knocked a year off my life, stunted my development.
I was disproportionate, ridiculously developed in so many areas and yet so naive in others. I knew how to craft a perfectly eloquent metaphor before the rest of my class knew how to spell the word, and yet never bothered to learn how to do it on the off chance my intelligence fell away from the perpetual sleep deprived state I’d soon find myself in.
I considered the morals of God long before I learned how to properly crack an egg, and found myself discussing the pros and cons of the quadratic formula long before I taught myself how to do laundry.
I quandered suicide before I learned what living truly meant, and lay on the brink for years because it was the safest place to be before creeping back with my tail between my legs when my emotional development finally slapped me across the cheek.
Dark circles and the stench of caffeine used to identify me, and now only labels me as a student, because so many of us walk around like zombies, with exhales that reek of late nights and procrastination, regret of the latter a short inhale afterward.
My fingers were ink stained, even though I hardly ever used a pen to craft my writing, and I wore my mediocre craft around my neck as a shield to deflect the jeers, as though it were the prize of excellence.
March 21st, 2015 at 07:28pm