It's 4 a.m. and I'm doing that thing where I don't want to wake up, so I'm keeping myself up. I'm fucking exhausted.
This semester has been all over the place. Three fumbled papers will be late-penalized into my grades being pretty lackluster this year, which is my fault. I'll suffer the consequences, which I think involves looking into ADHD again in the new year. I know I've been saying that since I was 17, but the 3 and a half years of the people closest to me insisting this is more serious than I seem to be taking it have piled up past the point I can sit well with it. I want to take responsibility for myself. I'm not something I can disregard, especially being so young.
Speaking of that, I've been feeling older than usual. I wear button-ups, have a 5 o'clock shadow, and have a hometown I ostensibly no longer live in. My friends and I are semi-regulars at a bar where their out-of-town friends come to visit us, and the staff knows of us well enough to appear to really dislike us for whatever reason. I'm also technically a twice-published author, which barely eases my seemingly in-fucking-surmountable imposter syndrome about the whole vocation that I have these days. It makes me think a lot about where I have come from.
In my last post, I mentioned that the personal holiday I have on the 21st of December every year, where I think about the Secret Santa that I and my friends at the time had at Chel's house in 2019. I'm probably the only person who still thinks of that night. Everyone who was there lives in totally different cities: Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge, and Red Deer. The reason I think of that day is because it was the last time I felt like a teenager. I remember distinctly feeling in the first few minutes of leaving Chel's house and driving off further across Sylvan that something had ended. I couldn't tell what you what it was because of, but I felt grief and glee. Those feelings swirled into the part of the overcast night sky that remains orange over the city. It was the last part I saw as I drove into the garage of my parents' house, and the last past I thought of as I slept that night 'til whenever.
It also makes me think of you. You're someone from that time. I was talking to you that week. It was not even a month after a first call. So much has changed since then. In every conceivable facility of distance, we are so far away from that time. We're lone ships trudging through dark seas. These past few months, we haven't talked to each other much at all. We've been caught in our own shit. But you remain my best friend. I just want to figure out how we can remain acting like that.
I'm uneasy about the next few weeks, given that this time next year ushered in our Dark Age. I could be more worried about it. Our circumstances feel completely different, but like I said on call, I'm keeping a watchful eye. I'll fight for us to be alright.
