Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Who am I?

Supposedly adolescents are trying to figure out who they are. I knew that when I was an adolescent, but did not really see how it applied to me. Now that I'm middle aged, now I feel like adolescents are supposed to feel. I don't know who I am. I remember that I love hiking, skiing, rollerblading, and kayaking. I remember that I love being part of a large circle of friends, and organizing social events. I remember vivaciously engaging in witty repartee. But then I look at my life and I can't find that person. I look at my life, and I find myself sitting on the kitchen floor in my pajamas at three in the afternoon, eating a bag of microwave popcorn, because I was hungry and it wasn't too hard to cook, and because once it was ready, it didn't seem worth the effort to move to a location farther than the kitchen floor in order to eat it. Now I find myself drugging myself up on caffeine, in a desperate attempt to fulfill the requirements of my job. Now I find myself without friends, because having friends requires that you go out and do things with people, and that is just too much work for me. Now when I think of hiking and skiing, I just think of how burdensome it would be to have to stand up for so long. The doctors say there is nothing wrong with me. Therefore I must be a normal person. I must live according to what normal people are expected to do. I must work full-time and clean my house and go to the store. So I struggle to do all that, though my body tells me it is not what I am meant to be doing. But what else can I do? I have to keep on surviving.

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