Raz
Bluelighter
Hey there teenage self,
There are some things you need to know.
One day you will find yourself out of that pit you lament and on a long straight road. The horizon is a blur and the path disappears into the heat death of light like everything else does.
Everything you know is wrong. You're not special, and your suffering isn't unique. Or even that original. You will need to get over that before you get to this place.
This place does not lurk in filth and darkness, it does not live in your blood. Nothing lives in your blood; that's an adolescent ego-driven fantasy.
This place is well-lit if stark and colorless, fluorescence hiding any shadows; there comes a point when it's impolite to bear shadows.
This place is full of rows of meat sitting at electronic machines and serving useless tasks to fill their day. This place creates arbitrary rules and constrictions to instill a false sense of purpose to it all. You will rail against it at first, but it wears you down. It always wears you down.
The tool this place uses to wear you down is mediocrity. It will bludgeon you with mediocrity until you stop fighting, and until you start to realise that mediocrity is what you've been striving for all this time.
By then it will be too late.
You will lose your feelings. At first this will seem like a victory. No longer a victim to your own chemical swings, no longer a patron of self-destruction. They call this growing up. You will be proud.
Then one day realisation will dawn that all those things that defined you, the darkness and the teenage pretentions to importance, are gone. And nothing has replaced them.
You will be sheathed in this veil, free to gaze in dumb wonder but powerless to act beneath your self-made niqab. You will shuffle through your days and nights and remember your dreams and aspirations with less attachment at each sunrise and you will have many many conversations about television and celebrities and you will forget the details and the passion of the interests you profess to hold. But you won't care.
Beneath all of this, you won't know how to care.
You can remember how to care. This is how you remember.
Some days you will listen to music. You will be brought to tears of sadness or rage. You may not understand this, you may not understand the need to listen to the same damn song on repeat over and over and over until your head is full of someone else's song. But you don't have songs of your own anymore, so just do it.
You will want to smash the faces of strangers around you, scream until your throat is hoarse, punch walls until your skin breaks. This is your last link to what you were, so hold onto it. Underneath the layers of that sickening colorless niqab, hold on to it. You no longer have the ability to create these emotions on your own, you need some way to remember what they are.
It will shame you to know this. It will disgust you. I know. But it's all you have, and it's all I have to give you.
This is how to be a man.
There are some things you need to know.
One day you will find yourself out of that pit you lament and on a long straight road. The horizon is a blur and the path disappears into the heat death of light like everything else does.
Everything you know is wrong. You're not special, and your suffering isn't unique. Or even that original. You will need to get over that before you get to this place.
This place does not lurk in filth and darkness, it does not live in your blood. Nothing lives in your blood; that's an adolescent ego-driven fantasy.
This place is well-lit if stark and colorless, fluorescence hiding any shadows; there comes a point when it's impolite to bear shadows.
This place is full of rows of meat sitting at electronic machines and serving useless tasks to fill their day. This place creates arbitrary rules and constrictions to instill a false sense of purpose to it all. You will rail against it at first, but it wears you down. It always wears you down.
The tool this place uses to wear you down is mediocrity. It will bludgeon you with mediocrity until you stop fighting, and until you start to realise that mediocrity is what you've been striving for all this time.
By then it will be too late.
You will lose your feelings. At first this will seem like a victory. No longer a victim to your own chemical swings, no longer a patron of self-destruction. They call this growing up. You will be proud.
Then one day realisation will dawn that all those things that defined you, the darkness and the teenage pretentions to importance, are gone. And nothing has replaced them.
You will be sheathed in this veil, free to gaze in dumb wonder but powerless to act beneath your self-made niqab. You will shuffle through your days and nights and remember your dreams and aspirations with less attachment at each sunrise and you will have many many conversations about television and celebrities and you will forget the details and the passion of the interests you profess to hold. But you won't care.
Beneath all of this, you won't know how to care.
You can remember how to care. This is how you remember.
Some days you will listen to music. You will be brought to tears of sadness or rage. You may not understand this, you may not understand the need to listen to the same damn song on repeat over and over and over until your head is full of someone else's song. But you don't have songs of your own anymore, so just do it.
You will want to smash the faces of strangers around you, scream until your throat is hoarse, punch walls until your skin breaks. This is your last link to what you were, so hold onto it. Underneath the layers of that sickening colorless niqab, hold on to it. You no longer have the ability to create these emotions on your own, you need some way to remember what they are.
It will shame you to know this. It will disgust you. I know. But it's all you have, and it's all I have to give you.
This is how to be a man.
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