Aging, but not getting any older

This came to me last night while I was laying in bed unable to sleep. I wrote it as something to submit to the campus newspaper. I'm pretty sure they accept anything (imagine that "anything" is italicised and the rest isn't).

Aging, but not getting any older

I just got through one of those tumultuous times in ones life after which a person, such as myself, might find himself awake, still, staring at the ceiling from under warm blankets at five in the morning with altogether too much on his mind. It was my twenty-second birthday. Not a milestone in the adolescent sense. I’ve already voted in four elections, I’ve gotten a driver's license, and there are no major countries left to cross off the “Old Enough To Drink” list. Perhaps the twenty-second birthday is more mature than the sixteenth or eighteenth or even the twenty-I can drink in the United States-first. Maybe, the twenty-second birthday is the first true unmilestone.

There is nothing restricted to me based upon age anymore that I really need or want. The only milestones (if you can call them that) left are based on age alone: twenty-five, thirty, forty and beyond. I don’t suggest I have nothing left in life to look forward to, just nothing left to look forward to a birthday for. Now is when I stop counting forward to adulthood, and start counting backward from youth. I can’t believe it’s been blank years since…

Candles on my cake aren’t the only things there are more of now. Since those heady days of puberty I’ve always been of the more than less hairy variety, but in the past few months I’ve been noticing something happen, and I might just describe it as a hostile takeover. Lonely hairs seem to be straying up from my chest onto my shoulders, a few making it to the nearest reaches of what many would call my “back.” A similar incursion into neutral territory also seems to be happening far to the south, but I fear standards guidelines might prevent me from sharing the gruesome news from the land whose name I dare not mention. Luckily, the invasions in the south and north haven’t been concurrent with a diaspora from Hair’s natural homeland: the head.

Other things there are more of these days: portable electronics, credit cards, responsibilities, sleepless nights, aching muscles, complaints about young people, and things I forget. There once was a time, long, long ago when I could run in circles all day and eat nothing but deep fried bacon with mayonnaise and drink nothing but whipping cream then get so drunk I black out on a concrete floor and wake up the next morning refreshed and ready for more. Today I’m always tired and sore; can’t stomach anything heavier than a low-fat bran muffin; am lactose intolerant; get horrible multi-day hangovers from drinking in moderation; and can only sleep under perfectly assembled and exacting conditions.

It seems, perhaps I jumped from twenty-one to sixty-five, a lifetime of slow degradation jam-packed into a year. However, while my body is about ready to fall into an empty grave somewhere, my mind, or at least my mental maturity, is regressing. I have no long-term plans, and no career in mind. I don’t even have a minor, or really even know what courses I need to take to graduate; although somewhere, in the back of my head I seem to remember having taken care of all that at some point. I’m unemployed and racking up the bills and the thought of looking for a job, even a part-time job, makes me shudder. Decisions have become the bane of my existence and television-viewership my purpose.

I know not how to change my situation or even how to live with it, but let my story be an example for all those who come after me. Take it easy on your stomach; unlike a cow you only have one. My suggestion: for every drink, try to eat one fruit or vegetable, or you know, drink less. Don’t apply for credit cards. As responsible as you think you are and as well as you think you understand finance, there will always be something “shiny” that you must to have “right now”. A credit card makes having that “shiny” thing “right now” possible, and in the mind of a young person “shiny” and “right now” always trump a “low 18.8 per cent annual rate.” Another good idea is to write your plans and decisions down. Not only does that help to cement things in place a bit more, it’ll also be a hell of a lot easier to remember those brilliant ideas when it comes time for action. Finally, when you’ve got everything under control, find a good method to remove hair, because it won’t be long until something ends up somewhere you don’t want it.

Keep on Tranglin,
Anthony