For When You Feel Defeated And Lost

We wear our suits so well, ironed and proper. There are no lines in our fabrics, no indication of lethargy. We are responsible now, wearing the shoes of maturity. Our days are deciphered into to-do lists that never cease. More trivial nonsense keeps piling on, more mundane chores we must address, more and more of the same old shit that numbs our existence into banality.

It wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t always this taxing. There was a time when we didn’t live like this when we didn’t anticipate the day’s end so eagerly. There was a time when we were too in love with life to fathom the blatant disregard of killing time.

We were younger then. Of course we were. It always resorts to those days, those reckless and ignorant days of youth. We were bold, the living entity of a profanity-infused fearlessness – the I don’t give a fuck generation. We drank our vodka straight and coffee black. We didn’t need alternatives to lessen the harsh taste. We handled the pain, the sharpness that hit our throats with each sip. We pride ourselves on this skill, it was an extension of our greater invincibility.

But now we’ve lost it. We crave the same effect – the perpetual high of sorts but the means to it are severely sugar coated. We reach for the mixers and creams. We can’t handle the bitterness like we used to. We’ve succumbed to cowardly weakness.

Soft, so soft we’ve become now contrary to popular belief. We think we’ve hardened, but what a distorted sense of self we have created. In youth, we basked in a fortress of valiancy. We were so sure of ourselves. Our confidence bordered on egotism. Yet, it provided a natural defense against external and internal adversaries. Opinions never fathomed us. Self-doubt was absent from our vocabulary. We were resilient in our certainty.

But then we aged and something happened. Little by little, our walls were torn and we became softer, more susceptible to preying judgments. The words hurt more now than they did before. The perils of life weigh our movements. The day-to-day grind slowly eats at us as we wonder how we’ve become so defeated and lost.