Halfway Through

          Last week I got a mohawk.  I think the gay gothic boy who cut my hair was flirting with me.  He was in his early 20s.  I’m not gay, I’m just vain—I liked the attention.
          My high school best friend is texting me every 10 minutes for the past couple months and eventually I had to stop responding so he would stop texting.
          I’m 35.  I figure that with all the damage I’ve done, I’m about halfway through my life.
          A year younger than me, my old best best friend died of what I believe to be a drug overdose this past Christmas.
          I have another old friend telling me to come to Mass and visit him.  He misses me.  Last time I saw him he tried to sell me his own medication.  I declined.
          I got another old friend sending me pictures of the good ol’ days.  Everyone’s talking about the good ol’ days, like it means something.  Like I wish to relive that horrible, horrible past of mine.  In the good ol’ days, yeah I had fun, but that’s only because I hated myself and I wanted to die all the time and I did everything I could to escape this fact.
          People thought I was fun.  Now,     I’m boring, they’re boring, we’re all so fuckin boring.  There’s no fun anymore, no adventures to be had.  Some of us still drink, but at least we’re not destroying other people’s lives and making ourselves feel like shit.  At least I’m happy—er.
          Sometimes I have breakdowns.  I have fits.  Sometimes I don’t trust the people I should be trusting the most.  I’m a sensitive boy who wishes harm on no one, but sometimes I feel like I’m being tested.  Like my patience is being put on the testing block.
          Sometimes I still hate myself.  Sometimes I still do want to die.
          Sometimes I wish to relive my glory days too.  Sometimes I wish I had a time machine and I could do it all over again and I wouldn’t change a thing.  Just rewind and I’m back in the shitter.
          Then I look in the mirror and I’m like fuck, I’m an adult now.  Better start acting like one.  But what does that even mean?  Can someone tell me, please?  There used to be, like in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s, a standard for adulthood and I assume when they hit the age of 18, they were forced to grow up.  Every adult when I was a kid knew what they were doing.  Me and all the other millennials are openly clueless.
          We live in an age where all standards of living are being challenged.  Including adulthood.  It’s like we’ve been having a midlife crisis since our 20s and we’re still deep in it, 10 years later.
How does an adult act?  I think they’re supposed to be serious all the time and take care of business.  The problem with that is I’m physically incapable of taking anything seriously and I don’t seem to have any business that needs to be taken care of.  So how do I grow up if I have no purpose?  I don’t think I’m alone here.  Everyone my age, or younger, feels like they have no purpose.
          This fake brand of ethics that got the past generations through, has now been challenged and without it we are lost.
          Everyone my age seems to agree with this when I talk to them.  In the movies, the adults are just as openly clueless as me, because these movies were written by people who’d grown up in my generation.