Remember how you grew up thinking "I'm going to be different"?
Couldn't have been more wrong. Blame youthful ignorance. All those big fucking hopes and dreams, that great pursuit of happiness. Perhaps the greatest lie ever told, a lie we tell ourselves to make it through another day. But as the years go by, the horrible truth starts seeping in through the cracks. You're not going to live forever, time doesn't wait for anyone and especially not you. You are a poorly made bag of skin, bones and liquids, with a very real expiry date. And when that day comes, all of the moments that make up your life will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
You will fuck up that thing you didn't realize was priceless until it's already gone. And you'll carry more water to the ocean of tears. Time passes, you try and get your shit together again, or at least lie to yourself convincingly enough. You find yourself doing that dreadful and awkward thing called adult dating, cutting away at the little bits of heart you have left. The stereotypes are dead on, the cliches a reality so cruel that only a cliche could hope to describe it. The people are all the same, souls bleak and gray like the skies of your golden prison. Outside of having kids, men and women were never supposed to get along.
You will wake up one day, knife firmly planted in your back, rife with the fingerprints of those you trusted and possibly even helped come up. People you held down, people you thought had the very back that's now dripping with crimson. Forgive, but never forget. Until of course, you do. Probably on that same night you added another cliché to your collection. Drunk dialing and voicemail messages you can't remember, to people you have no business calling in the first place. But alas, the flesh is weak. Your own hypothalamus is cheating you with every single drop of dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin.
But you stumble on, clutching on to the lie you call hope, desperately searching for something out there, something, anything that holds the promise of meaning. Clawing at the invisible walls inside of your own skull until your fingertips bleed. Looking for faces, but all you can see is the masquerade.
Image courtesy of an anonymous /r/depression user
