the future has always scared me.
I always thought I’d never live to see 16, and my friends and family wouldn’t really care that I was gone.
that I would just be the kid that faded away at age 13 that no one really cared all that much about because I was “weird.”
I thought if I did have a future, it would consist of a crappy job that I hate, forever stuck in the small town I grew up in and always despised, being criticized by the members of my family that I never saw about the tattoo I got last week or how my hair is now.
I thought my future would be terrible.
that it would be the type of future everyone deliberately tries to avoid for themselves.
I knew my writing would go nowhere, regardless of how much I love it or how hard I tried to make it become something.
it would always be doomed, and I would never be able to stray from the path I was placed on at birth.
but now, I know differently.
and it’s still utterly terrifying.
the unknown scares me, and my future is exactly that – unknown.
I’ve always been relatively good at math and thinking logically and solving problems and searching among chaos for something specific, but this is one that I cannot solve.
I can’t combine the numbers right or find the piece or the specific thing that I need.
the future is something I cannot see.
I could end up flipping burgers at mcdonald’s when I’m 30 or a writer before I hit 25, my dream career.
living in a decent apartment or moving back in with my parents by the time I finish college – assuming I even get into one and complete it, that is.
which brings the question: college dropout or graduate?
working in the field of creative writing or putting together terrible poems in the room I sleep in now at my parents’ houses and waking up at 3 p.m. to go to work with rude people and an ice cream machine that’s always broken?
all alone or able to surround myself with a few close friends and those I care for when I need them and even when I don’t?
am I doomed to wander back to that path, or will I remain off of it for the remainder of my life?
how many people will come and go?
will any remain five years from now?
will I?
