America, I'm Getting Older
on getting exactly what you asked for and hating that it worked
Just Put Me in a Nursing Home Already
If you had one wish, what would it be?
Don’t answer that too fast. Tbh nobody answers that honestly without accidentally telling on themselves a little.
I think about the movie Obsession a lot, probably more than a well adjusted person should. Not because it’s about love or greed, whatever the poster’s trying to sell you. It’s about what happens when you get exactly what you asked for, excluding the edits.
Even further back: Aladdin, Timmy Turner, whichever cartoon let a kid snap their fingers and get whatever they wanted > I ABSOLUTELY used to envy that. It wasn’t necessarily about the wush, but it was the fact that they got to want something ugly and specific before anyone taught them to be embarrassed about it. By the time the wish actually means something, you’ve spent twenty years learning to launder what you want into something that sounds acceptable at a dinner party. Nobody wishes for “happiness” - that’s completely horsesh*t. That’s the answer you give when there’s a group of people around and you don’t want to get looked at funny.
I turn 28 in two days and if the wish I made last year had actually played out in full, I think I would’ve been f*cked.
Yeahhh.. Wish again, my boy
Here’s the list. Not requests. Demands, if I’m being honest, because a wish is just a demand you’re too much of a coward to say to an actual person, so you say it to the universe instead and let it take the blame.
Millionaire, or close enough it doesn’t matter
People chomping at the bit to work with me
The baddest woman alive, obsessed, in my corner
Did I mention millionaire > yeah, twice, on purpose, because that’s what wanting something looks like when nobody’s grading you on it
When I wished for these things, I wished for them in a moment of bravodo. A moment of feeling like the H.N.I.C.
In the midst of sitting on these wishes for the past year, I can proudly say I’M GLAD IT DIDN’T COME TRUE. I feel like God has a funny way of showing you what you really what through others. It’s the real life “ be careful what you wish for “ moment. Again, it’s slow and brutally painful, becuase ( at times ) you are in the midst of it.
Honestly, I think that’s worse. The movie at least gives you the mercy of speed > you get to watch yourself get destroyed in real time, which means some part of you can see it happening and go “oh, this is bad.” Slow doesn’t give you that courtesy. Slow just lets you keep telling people, including yourself, that you’re the same guy you were at 27, right up until you’re not, and there’s no scene, no soundtrack cue, no moment where the truth announces itself.
I don’t fully trust myself to know if it’s already started. That’s the actual problem, and it’s a genuinely annoying one — I can’t use my own judgment to check my own judgment. If I ask myself “am I still humble, still listening,” the version of me that’s quietly rotting would say the exact same sentence, same tone, and mean it just as much. Ego doesn’t announce itself with a costume change. It just starts answering your questions for you.
Oh Brother, This Guy Stinks
I don’t totally know what this costs yet, and I’m not going to pretend I’ve got it all figured out three days before my birthday, that would be its own kind of ego.
But I think it’s supposed to cost you the actual work .. the part where you stay bad at something in private, on purpose, long enough to get good at it, with nobody making you do it. it’s about the dedication + the unwavering discipline. Nobody claps for that part because no one wishes for that part either, which tells you something. Who in the hell wishes for more discipline? Come on now.
I’m not writing this like I’ve already lost it, or like I’ve already won some battle against it. I genuinely don’t know which one’s happening to me right now. That’s kind of the entire point of writing this three days out instead of three years from now, when I’d probably have a tidy answer for it and it’d already be too late to ask the question honestly.
Ask Me Again Next Year
I’m afraid of getting older ( most people are tbh ), but i don’t think this is what turning 28 actually is about. Not the fear of getting older. The fear of realizing how close you got to becoming someone you wouldn’t recognize, and not from some dramatic fall from grace. Just from being fed slowly, a little at a time, until you forgot what hungry used to feel like and started calling it “growth” instead.
I don’t have a clean ending for this. I wish I did > that’d be the easier version, wrap it up, say I’ve learned my lesson, say I know myself now. I don’t. The wish is still out there, still partially working, and I genuinely can’t tell if I’m the guy watching it happen or the guy it’s already happening to. Maybe there’s no difference. Maybe that’s the whole joke, and the joke’s on me, which, fine, at least it’s a good bit.
All I know is the kid with the notebook, no rolodex, nobody chomping at the bit for anything .. I can still hear him. Some days louder than others. I don’t know how long that lasts.
Nobody warns you that the scariest part of getting what you wanted isn’t the getting. It’s not knowing when you stopped noticing.
I turn 28 in two days > ask me again next year.