Dirt

When you're in high school, all you can think is, "i've got to get out of here" and you wait and you wait and you wait until it's your turn. While you are waiting you find some dirt to kick around, maybe a few hearts to break or trouble to swim around in. In the day to day, everything just is. Bad things seem normal. No one questions beliefs or traditions. All the grime and poverty and dirt is all disguised in trees. Lots and lots of trees. There are so many, you can't see the forest through them.

When you are young like that, young in your mind, like I was, you dream of a life so big. You imagine that the things you will attain or achieve outside of this realm will be weighted and grand and satisfying. Anything is possible outside of this place. You can't imagine what those things are that you will do, but they are going to be great and you will finally, finally feel full.

You are waiting for your turn and you feel antsy. You know that if you stay, you will live the same day over and over again.  Same roads, same faces, same dirt - day in and day out. Thoughts like that can make you crazy.  Maybe you cope by doing drugs. Maybe you cope by drinking or smoking. Not much change up there so you alter your mind instead.  Everyone calls it fun. But mostly, it's just a way out. Even if its only a few hours. And even if they'd never admit it.

There is dirt everywhere but you stop seeing it.

Then the day comes when your turn is up. Time to go. You pretend you are prepared but you are not. Your old friends don't understand your new life. Your new friends don't understand you at all. Nothing makes sense because this whole time you've been banking on finding people "like you" on the outside. Maybe they are there but they appear to be much better at disguising it then you.

There is dirt on all your things and you're sure everyone can see it.

But you are strong, right? So strong because you know how to survive. All these people out here living - they don't know shit about how to survive. And you think to yourself, that's really all I have going for me. I never got any of that other stuff, the dance lessons, the language tutor - that is apparently a requirement for living. Put on your best face and go do some pull-ups. Its going to be a long while.

But nothing feels real. You try and try but everything is so superficial...and so clean. Where I had once found solace in the comforts of facts and science, transporting me to a more concrete, stable place, it was no longer enough. Here I am, out in the world! Shouldn't I be feeling better yet? Shouldn't I feel satisfied? But all I felt was lonely and out of place.

So its like the plot of a movie where the main character can't seem to foresee what the audience already knows. The place you've despised and run from is the only place you want to be. You feel like you'll never really be able to establish connections with people who haven't been here, didn't see what you saw, or haven't helped you wash the dirt out of your hair when things got too bad. Now it feels like the only thing that is real.


You should do the things that make you happy.  You should hike mountains or fold laundry or bake or become a famous scientist or a PA or move to California or Hawaii or write or dig in the dirt or whatever it is you need to to do to be happy. You have to know, without reservation or guilt, that you are the only one capable of knowing what that is.