Quarter-life crisis

The depression sets in like the fog of the city. It settles over me and sticks like a plastic sheet that suffocates and contains this fierce restlessness that keeps wanting to come out.

I need to get out, to move. More than anything, I need to move. Everyday I sit, I stare, I think, and role into the mundane mess that is my every day “work”. I am restless. I sit in front of my computer, like looking though a window at the world, watching everyone and everything move and evolve faster and faster. I see all the things that I could be doing and want to be doing but have chosen not to. Yes, it is a choice. A choice that feels like a masochistic pull into the world of the “musts” and “shoulds”. It is a force that holds me back and grounds me, pins me down, as my soul runs around the peg, runs in circles, looking, rushing, unconscionably panicked. For what?

I want to shoot responsibility in the head. I want to shake it and shout at it, yelling to leave me alone and that it doesn’t matter. I want to be reckless. To live every day recklessly like it is the last day of my life. But everyday becomes more and more similar. And I get tiered. I am tiered out by monotony. Everyone keeps saying they are tiered. 

The body is fragile. It is already starting to deteriorate and I want to beat it out of weakness before it is too late. I am only 26 and the dread and asphyxiating feeling that there is never enough time creeps up behind me and every time I look back, it creeps closer and closer. My body is yearning for freedom, for the freedom to move, roll, jump, dance, combine acrobatics with climbing and going downhill, fast. It wants to be strong to support the sickness and cruelties that the outside world and the mind inflicts on it. But mine is still weak. I am letting it waste way. It is good, it could be great, but I am not using it.

And then I turn to the mind for comfort. But I get none.

All I think about is: what have I accomplished? What have I done that is significant? Where am I going? Am I being useful? Am I doing what I love?

The questions these days are endless. They were never few. But now, as I pass the first quarter of my life, there are fewer and fewer answers. I can’t help but feel like something is dying.