12/2/24

There comes a time in everyone's youth when they experience a singular moment they may be able to recognize as the first time they fully gained consciousness. For some, it might be a seemingly minute experience like their second-grade girlfriend telling them she's now dating their second-grade best friend instead of them. For others, it may be more impactful, like hunkering in the basement of their grandmother's house during a particularly violent Summer storm at the age of ten. I do not know what causes this clear distinction between far-off childhood memories and memories that exist within the same timeline as memories made yesterday, nor do I care to research it further. However, it feels safe to assume that everyone, whether they distinctly remember it or not, has had a moment when they went from being a child with little knowledge of why they do things, where they are, or why they feel the way they do, to a child with a firm grasp on actions, consequences, information, and experiences. 

A few months back I wrote an entry on the blog discussing memories, and more specifically, venting about my experience with remembering so much. Part of the reason I believe that is the case is because I feel as though I have been conscious for far longer than I would've liked to be. For me, my first distinct memory in which I felt I grasped that I was alive, the people around me had lives, and that things were happening in general, was a car ride in the back of my father's Audi to Mechanicsburg an hour or so West of Lancaster to see his new girlfriend, Allison. My sister and I sat together, with a pink fleece blanket that his girlfriend had gifted us depicting Donkey, Fiona, Puss N' Boots, and Shrek from the hit 2001 film 'Shrek' tied to each side handle above the window, separating the front seat from the back. I remember my Dad telling us something about the woman I would soon remember was named 'Allison', though I can't recall exactly what it was he was saying, and that to me, this hour-long car ride felt like it had taken a year off my life. It doesn't make sense to me why this, and other, memories stand out to me. I would been just shy of two years old at the time, which plays a big hand in my questioning of why it is I can recall the incident so clearly in my mind, but furthermore, what purpose do memories like that serve lingering in the back of my mind after all this time. 

From this point onward, I can recall bits and pieces of most moments in my life - impactful or otherwise - in details more vivid than I care to continue going into. However, what makes me so certain that these details are real, and not simply piecing the stories, photos, and important memories together to form one congruent time-line, is the internal dialogue that has come along with it. For the most part, approximately 20 years after the Shrek Blanket Car Ride, I have had actual thoughts running through my head; constantly. Questions and inquisitions, answers and made-up problems, thoughts on thoughts and thoughts about those thoughts, and concerns for having thought those thoughts about those thoughts. I have memories and thoughts about those memories and then a few years later I'll have memories of thinking about those memories. And for the last few years, whether it is a symptom of this blog, and the constant self-analyzation I can't help but do on a daily basis, or simply a longing for some concrete evidence that everyone has the same problems I've been thinking about why it is I feel like the answer is that they don't. 

We live in a generation where having problems feels like a cool thing to have. It is something to complain about, constantly, something to relate and be related to, it is something that inherently makes you more interesting when spoken to, however, it is now often something that is so watered down, that people with actual problems don't have a space to discuss them anymore. Luckily I'm not one of those people, I'm privileged with an echo chamber of thoughts to throw my feelings into, post on my Instagram story, and never talk about again, however, not everyone is as lucky as I am. One of the biggest problems this causes is an accentuated feeling of 'otherness', beyond the feelings that already come with most real problems. Not only can you not relate to a calmer, potentially more neurotypical crowd, but it has also become more difficult to relate to the other side of the coin because of how relatable they think your feelings are, and how much worse they think their feelings are. They minimize your actual problems by generalizing them into their own, and then judging when you act in a way they thought they related to, consequently making you feel more different than you had before you tried talking to anyone about it in the first place. And one of these issues my friends and I often express amongst ourselves is this feeling of otherness in and of itself. 

Initially, it was men. My thought process was, that once I was around more women, and could experience life with them in a way that allowed us to relate our experiences naturally rather than forcing us one way or another, that would make me feel more appreciated, more seen, and less like an outsider in my own space. But women and queer men are not as close-knit as the women I grew up around had led me to believe. And while women were still people that made me feel inherently safer next to someone, it was not the only box to check. Then it was queerness. Surrounding myself with people who had similar experiences, had been seen in the same light, and had a similar way of thinking would allow us to understand each other in a less verbal and more real way. But that too wasn't the end all be all, and it became clear that not everyone had the same coming-of-age experience with their queerness that I had. Then it became neurodivergence, but we covered why that doesn't always work. Then more mature people. Then people from similar backgrounds, then people from the East Coast, but no matter how niche the relatability I was desiring became, I wasn't able to connect with everyone the way I hoped I would. It became slowly apparent that, despite what everyone was told, I was in fact not like everyone else. I was not just experiencing something everyone else experiences, not everyone feels this way from time to time, not everyone struggles to find themselves, not everyone thinks the way I do, not everyone hates going out but does it anyways, and not everyone wants to find friends but can't bring themselves to be social every single day, not everyone has memories from the age of two, and not everyone has to. 

Most recently, this thought process has fixated on the period of my life I'm currently living through. More specifically, the way this period of my life feels. I feel old. To put it simply, I feel like I have been alive for far longer than I have, and with that, I feel very odd doing things that a normal 21-year-old is typically supposed to do. More than anything else, my lack of relatability, beyond the specifics of similar ways of thinking, is that I don't feel I have a similar grasp of youth that others do at my age. This is another thing me and my friends talk about a lot. At 21, I feel like Im in the latter years of my life. I should start dressing more maturely, taking my life more seriously, and figuring out my 5-year plan more concretely. A big part of this comes from the period of history we are in as well, both a time of great concern, but more importantly, of everything happening being readily available for observation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are all made so aware of everything, that it feels difficult to just let lose and have fun the way 21-year-olds have in the past, and I think that is causing a lot of difficulties, especially with those around me, to feel as though we have all the time in the world. What's more, these thoughts have been in my mind for a decade now, and at this point, it feels hard to ignore. I've been so aware of myself, in an unhealthy and irregular way, that every time I get to a 'point' in my life, I can't believe I'm already there. 

When I was 13, all I told myself was to reach high school, and everything would get better. New friends, new surroundings, a new start. I would be more mature, and have things more figured out than I did now. Then I got to high school and told myself the same thing for every big event there. Homecoming would change my life. Summer break would make me better. Junior year things would get so much easier. Just get to my two-week Christmas break and catch your breath. Get through graduation and it's smooth sailing. But every time, the time would pass the way that it does, and it felt like not enough had passed to get me to where I was, but somehow I was there, and looking back I could hardly recognize the person that wanted to make it there in the first place. College has been the same thing. Every year just fought to get to the good part, living through it, and then realizing I was too focused on the next step to appreciate how good it was in the moment. It is this constant, never-ending line of thinking that makes me feel the bitter angry old man that I am today. Two years into college I had received enough partial credit for a sloppy seam despite being in school for design and not to be a seamstress for me to realize I had had enough of fashion. Two years into dating I had enough "let's hang out and see what happens" despite explicitly saying I wasn't looking for hookups to decide I was done dating. Eight years into being too dramatic, too emotional, or too bitchy despite being told we have the same problems I decided I had enough of making new friends. 20 years into waiting for the good part I decide I've turned into a resentful bitter old man at the age of 21. So on and so forth. 

On a more positive note, I think having an 'older' perspective on life is not an inherently bad trait to have. On one hand, yes I'm not seen as a fun person for not being willing to go out regularly nor wanting to waste my time on highs I know are temporary; on the other, I think it allows people with similar outlooks on life as myself to have a more grounded, potentially realistic approach to things. It does not mean I'm more mature than anyone else, or that my way is the most correct way to do things, but maybe I learn from my mistakes a little more consistently, or hopefully, by the time I am at an age where I should have my things figured out, I may have a bit of a head start. If nothing else, I'm grateful that I feel like I've existed in one mind for long enough to start feeling like I can understand it, and with my eyes now set on my 30s as the final hooray for when things should get better, I have high hopes that the last (almost) 22 years will have served me well enough to make that happen.