I wish I could explain to you why it bothers me, but it’s not something I can name, not really. I tell myself I’m this strong person and I think about all the wrong things in the world and, God, what an idiot I am, the way my mind runs over the same things again and again. It’s hard to recall when I became this person but sometimes I just miss the way this didn’t used to matter, none of it mattered, and I was bored sometimes but it was okay, it was normal, I am normal, I forget that, this is a phase, you are a phase, we are a phase. I think about time and relativity and my professor, married at twenty-five, and is that the life for me? You started old and I started young and there are still so many years left unaccounted for. The hugeness of all of this astounds me until the only thing to do is push it out of my mind, in which case it comes back at full force, taunting, challenging, well, what are you going to do about it? Nothing, of course. Nothing nothing nothing until one day I wake up and it is there, suddenly overnighted as a surprise, and they don’t need your signature to decide you’re an adult. It just happens. It just is. And I may pretend to know responsibility but really, I don’t. I know pretend-house and small paychecks and you may know more than me but not by much. Sometimes I’m not sure if there is anything out there that makes sense. Something has to. Something has to.
