I will turn 26 this year, and what a terrifying thing that is. 

I will turn 26 this year, and yet I have no idea if I am where I’m meant to be. Sure, I am not where I wish to be, but how can I know that if I don’t know where I should be? We are abundant in our angst, yet certain of our path. We fought so deeply to surface briefly, only to find our questions remain unchanged. Our hands have grown rougher yet the soil stays the same.

I will turn 26 this year, and I have no clue what I have to my name. A collection, perhaps, of bits and pieces from our efforts towards a half decent life. Though what good are pieces that do not make up a meaningful whole? The same rooms wear the same cracks. The same meadows leave us more lost. The same emptiness that tempts us with the idea that we are crumbs, and dust, and a hundred untied ends. 

I will turn 26 this year, and I have no idea if I have seen all that much. Though my eyesight worsens and blurs, my body shifts beneath the tiredness of one that has witnessed heavy truths. We can still move, and we can still sustain, but it feels as if part of us desires to spend more time in our nightmares, than awake – chasing our dreams.

Every morning we wake with the same sandbags around our ankles, and the feeling that something was tightened.

I turn 26 this year, and I feel most alone in a room with other people. They whisper I was slow in my maturity, yet I have found only boredom from most of those I’ve met. They wear their righteousness like undersized t-shirts, and boast of emotional intelligence they hypocritically fail to embody. Their eyes hold the virginity of a spirit unbroken by horrors they haven’t met. But is this truly boredom? Could I do what I critique?

Or are these the bitter thoughts of my own isolated madness? 

I turn 26 this year, and I fear being forgettable. Although I disgust at my loneliness, I find the most peace outside all else. I feel a pull to join the masses, though their philosophies I find repulsive. I feel a pull to join the masses, yet my efforts to do so are met with painful shoves. I feel a pull to join the masses, but only outside them have I ever felt my own. Then what is this voice inside me, that draws me to the crowd? Does it beckon me to my meaning?

Or does it come to silence my purpose? 

I am 26 this year, and I have no answer to whether I still hate myself. Every reflection I catch in a mirror, I stay back to examine the man looking back. I do it not out of curiosity, nor even to admire my appearance. Rather, out of an irrational hope, that perhaps one day a better person might look back. Does that mean I chase the man I will become? Or the boy I once childishly was?

Or does it mean I wish to be anyone else but the person I am?

I am 26 this year, and my mind has never felt more fractured. Even writing this short piece, I am unsure if I am speaking for myself. There are voices echoing these hollow walls, so often they mush and slur. We rub elbows, and share the same spaces in here. These are the only brothers I may ever come to know. But like most families we grow tired of sharing space. Some days we fight for control, other days we fight to give it up.

Most days, we fight to remember – searching for the moment we fractured, or proof we were ever whole to begin with.

I am 26 this year, and I wish I could cry to save my life. Beyond the assistance of substance, I am shut off from my emotions. They circle me like vultures waiting for their chance to land. Though I effort to bridge that gap, it seems my deepest secrets still reject me. I thought I had earned my place beside them, and perhaps that would be my right to know them.

But it seems I’ve made a mistake. I suppose I am not short on those too. 

I’ll have lived 26 full years, by the end of this one. Yet it feels like “full” is the wrong word of choice. It feels like my life has barely begun. But it also feels like there is hardly much time left. 

I know for certain I am caught between choosing to start too late, or quieting down and letting the ending pass. 

What would even really be lost, if this is truly all he ever wrote?