Learning How To Be Young

I tried something tonight for this exact reason. It wasn’t a disaster. It wasn’t life affirming. And that made me angry. I keep thinking I need to feel something. This whole game of being numb, and everything being just OK is getting old and worthless. Being just fine is not fine.

I tried to write about it soon as I got home, but nothing came out. Because I am in my head too much. Because I am always thinking about the next moment instead of the current moment. Because I can’t just let go. Taking the advice of that girl in Frozen is seaming to be a mountainous task — Let it go. Let it go. I have always been told I am so mature for my age, and I used to wear that compliment like a badge. But lately, that word — mature — has become an ugly monster that robs me of my true spirit. It is suffocating and I am now ashamed of it. I forget my age. I forget I will never be as young as I am now.

Have a drink. Have another. 
Tell a dirty joke. Tell a few. 
Stop being fake. Stop being quite.

I am having to learn how to be young as I get older. It’s like learning to walk again. I lost the power to stop thinking and trust myself enough to start talking. Is thinking before you speak always sound advice? If I think too much, I just don’t say much of anything at all. If and when I do, it’s not honest or authentic. Because it’s only a suppressed, over-thought out, and a diplomatic version of a response. I overanalyze my every word choice, my sentence structure, down to which tonality I should use to say it. TOO MUCH THINKING. Quit it.

This is about being loud and not being fearful of your own voice. 
This is about having conversations without destinations. 
They maybe raw and dirty. They maybe silly and immature. 
But they won’t be fake or boring.

I need to learn how to inject life into my moments. I need to learn how to stop thinking of the bigger picture and focus on the small strokes that build the masterpiece. It’s hard to be young. It’s hard to treat a stranger like a human you’ve known your whole life. It is so hard to cut out the bullshit pleasantries, and quit being so formal all the time. It’s hard to be so comfortable with yourself, that you make others feel comfortable around you. But we were all kids once, and kids do that all the time.

I need to learn how to lighten up. I need to learn how to be young.
I need to learn to dive into the deep waters of my character.