How You Become Somebody Else

You will miss them in the morning when you wake up wanting nothing but more sleep—there’s nothing sweet about waking up alone, unenthused, bored of what the day has to offer. Not unhappy but not optimistic. You will roll over and check your phone and scroll and be bored and maybe you will feel that scratchy throat pre-cry burn, or maybe you won’t, but either way you will know. You will think that you know what you’re missing.

But you’re not really missing them, not the guy who fucked you over or the girl who you fucked over or the person who was last next to you on whatever morning. You won’t be missing them, you’ll be missing you. You’ll think you’re missing out on someone, something else—that’s how you lose yourself.

Remember what it was like to wake up as a kid in the summer? When the sun made the space in front of the window all dusty and you didn’t have to think about what you’d do that day? Remember what it was like to just go outside and know that things would happen? Or stay inside and make things happen regardless?

Being a kid sucked, kind of—so much dead time waiting for adults to finish stuff, to shoot the spaceship money container up into the magic tubes at the bank, to take your seatbelt off when you got to the pool. Just waiting. But being an adult sucks, having the freedom to take care of all that yourself—writing the check that magically makes your money disappear into the hands of your landlord on the first of every month, the third if everything low key sucks right now, money-wise. Maybe the 10th if it’s like that. And so on, and so forth with all the exhausting thinking that comes with taking care of yourself.

Both stages are magic, though. I think we forget that life is magic, a crazy thing that shouldn’t really happen to us at all, in the way that it does—too fast and miserably slow, all at once. Full of a consciousness you didn’t ask for and never had time to consider: hope, doubt, loneliness, want, joy, wallowing sadness, that feeling you get when you finish all your food before the TV show actually starts. You know, the specifically human stuff. The big and small things that kids and adults have in common—do you ever think about what ten-year-old you would say to 2015 you? Right now.

Don’t think in terms of a twenty-something or a grown-ass adult or an adolescent or anything. Don’t think in any terms. Try to forget everything for a hot second and just like, sit the fuck down and meditate with your actual self instead of the thought of yourself. I’m not on some new-age bullshit here, I’m not telling you to light up the sage and throw your phone in the ocean and borrow money from someone to go backpack your dumbass around Europe. That’s not presence, that’s aimlessness. Every industry profits from your aimlessness, don’t get it twisted: marketers, advertisers, everyone would prefer that you stay aimless under the guise of enlightenment. But dude?

The only enlightenment you need is reacquainting yourself with your damn self. It takes a minute. It takes a mental muscle. Sit and do nothing. At the top of your day, wake up with nothing and don’t reach for your phone. Reach for nothing. Expect nothing. See what you feel. As corny as it is, it will be worth something. That’s for sure.