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.

Things I wish I could tell Ma

My mother asks me

“Why don’t you write anymore?”

“I can’t write, ma”

I don’t know how to explain it to you

How do I tell you that

Words don’t make sense to me anymore

They jumble up in front of me 

Expecting me to string them coherently

But I can’t 

I can’t process emotions anymore

I can’t seem to understand what I’m feeling and why

Everything feels like tangled earphones 

Except these don’t have an end

I can’t find out where it starts and where it ends

All i can see is a colossal mess

It’s so overwhelming that i’ve forgotten what it feels to feel anymore

I crave human touch

I ask you to hug me because science says we need 8 hugs a day for survival

And it’s true, I need them 

I was so used to being able to hold my friends 

So used to being held 

That i forgot that it was a privilege 

A privilege I no longer had 

I want you to hold me because no one else’s touch in the house feels good

It doesn’t make me comfortable because i have bones to pick with all of them

I want to be held but you hate being touched

I want to be hugged for hours at an end without talking 

But you don’t like hugs 

And in this house, I only like you

How do I tell you this is all that i feel

How do I express this desire without words 

How do I tell you that even talking feels like a task

I know you say I’m always on the phone but 

At this point, I am barely functioning anymore

Half the time I can’t reply to friends because they keep asking me

“What’s up?”

How do I tell them that my brain can’t process what’s up anymore 

That I am so worried about my future, about our future 

So much so that I’ve become zen

There is no panic in my mind because I’ve convinced myself so

I refuse to read the news because i can’t deal with the horrors each month brings forth

Is it anxiety? I don’t know

Am I depressed? I wouldn’t say so

I would rather call it sadtember and talk about yeeting myself off a bridge because 

It feels more natural to joke about it than to actually talk about my mental health

I would rather feel accomplished because I took a shower today than cry because I’m not productive

What even is productive?

What should I be productive for?

The future that is in ruins? 

The job that I probably won’t get because of this crashing economy?

The college admissions that I’m worried about because there are too many kids in our country and not enough good colleges?

The colleges that don’t even consider extracurriculars

The exams that check my intelligence just on the basis of my ability to rote learn

I can’t bring myself to be productive

None of this probably makes sense 

But I hope you understand ma

Everytime you say “why don’t you write anymore?”

My brain goes into an overdrive because I’m forced to think about these things 

And I panic 

So my brain goes numb 

I stop processing things 

And I tell you

“I can’t write, ma”