Another Irish Drinking Song

I miss college. I am reaching the point where I am starting to wonder if the whole thing wasn't just a very detailed, lengthy lucid dream I had. The nightmare I had last week is weighing heavily on my mind. I hate this job. Not even the work itself is the worst, though it is awful - no, what I hate is what I feel I am losing. Creativity. Drive. Days of life. This is my last year as a "teenager," and I have barely seen the sun so far. You start to realize how people can spend thirty-five years working this shit job in this shit place, and that's because you get so tired, so worn, so hurt, that it's easier to sit and stay than to get up and run and never come back.

I want to go out somewhere. I want to do all the stupid, ill-advised things I've spent my entire life being too sensible to do. I want to laugh and run and hope and reach out and grasp the stars in my fist. When Sean and I were dating the winter of my junior year, he promised me that he'd show me how to break into the middle school and climb onto the roof once summer came. We broke up in February and that never happened, obviously. I wish it had happened. I wish I could just get out. Eight months away at school and I'd managed to forget how stifling this town is, how stunted your dreams become because of the size of the planter they're grown in. It's worse because I feel like I caught a whiff, a taste of the Big Wide Open World, before coming back here and chaining myself to this job.

I'm quitting after the first week in August. I'm squeezing a summer into those three weeks thereafter, and then I go back to school. I'm not stuck here. I'm not going to be working at Offset forever. But it feels like I am. Deep in my heart, it feels like the past six-seven weeks have been a lifetime, and I've got another lifetime ahead before it's done. I can't imagine what it's like not to have an escape route. When you're little, and your parents say that education will open doors, you don't realize what they mean because you've never gotten a glimpse of what it's like to be stuck behind when the doors shut. I've seen it. It scares the fucking shit out of me. I try to commiserate with my mom, but she has little sympathy for me. I can't honestly blame her. I've had a great life. I'm not going to be throwing bundles for thirty-five years. I know all this. But there's knowing and then there's feeling, and right now, I feel a nameless terror at the sight of adulthood, nearing and leering ever closer to me. My feet ache. My shoulders ache. My head aches. My heart aches. I can barely write anymore.

At this point, I don't even give a shit about the money. I want out. I want out.