My Ode to Adulting

These days all I want to do is scream

Scream till my throat hurts

Till the last breath leaves my lungs

Till the pain no longer hurts.

I feel trapped in a body that doesn’t feel like mine

In a house that I don’t wish to call mine

With a family that doesn’t feel like mine.

Every day I wake up and hear

“You’re not depressed, you just enjoy it”

“You’re just lazy”

“You don’t even try”

Even waking up takes effort Ma,

I don’t know how to convince you otherwise.

It baffles you that I don’t feel productive

That I can’t drown myself in work like you do

I understand that it pains you to see me without ambition

But how can I have ambition when I don’t want to live

I know you’ll say that my will to live will come from my ambition

And I don’t know how to answer you when you say that

These days, I don’t know how to answer anything

You ask me about a future I don’t see

And plans that I don’t have

I don’t feel like an adult Ma,

I don’t want to feel like one

Why?

There’s no joy in being one

An adult walks around like nothing but a soul sucked of joy

Whose blood is pumped by a drug called ambition and success

What are they doing it for?

A better life? A bigger car? A bigger house?

None of that matters when they’re not there

I don’t want to be an adult,

I don’t want to live that life

I want to be the kid that I never got to be

So Ma, don’t get angry when I laugh and do stupid things

I’m trying really hard to not disappoint you every single day

While trying to be my own person

The role conflict keeps getting to me

I just want to relive my childhood in my own way

Let me shrug off this false adulthood for a while

Let me rediscover who I was supposed to be but lost along the way

Being an adult is a social construct that I’m not ready for yet.