Something About the New Decade Scares Me
By: Zach J. Payne
Tags: Mental Health, Life, Life Lessons, Motivation, Self

There’s something about the end of 2019 that’s hit me pretty hard. I’ve talked about it a little on here before.

There’s something about the fact that, not does my birth align with the decades (I was born at the end of 1990), but I graduated from high school in 2009.

The social media retrospective at the end of each year is always kind of brutal, but this time around — the retrospective for the whole decade — is even moreso. Not only is this a retrospective of the last 10 years, but of the 10 years since I’ve graduated from high school, the 10 years that I’ve spent in my 20s.

It’s like getting your first report card for adulthood. A chance for you to see how you fall in line with the rest of your peers. Where on the bell curve of being a normal adult do you fall?

Friends, I failed hard.

I failed at the college thing. I failed at the career thing. I failed at the living on my own as an independent person thing. I failed at keeping my old friends. I’ve failed at making friends my own age. I’ve failed at the making a living thing. I’ve failed at the escaping poverty thing. I’ve failed at the not turning into my parents thing. I’ve failed at the whole falling into love / pursuing adult relationships thing.

I did, however, write a novel this decade. A novel I was proud of. And it got some really good rejections, before I had to bury it back in the ground.

Does that count as a success?

Well, all that went down in 2016, and the angel and demon on my shoulder have spent the last four years arguing about whether or not it counts as something to be proud of. So fuck if I know.

I’m leaving the 2010s with a gigantic bag of blood pressure medicine, a good 150+ extra pounds, and growing depression fed by a solid decade of see, your parents were right about you! You shouldn’t have been so uppity. You’re just a failure after all, see?

I can’t argue with my depression, when the last 10 years of data prove every bad thing my depression has said about me right.

It makes me feel like a lunatic to even try. The small, little fire of optimism that I have doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I have proven it wrong, at every twist and turn.

Imagine that you’re a small country, and you’re trying to put a satellite into space.

But you only have enough resources for one rocket. And even that requires everything you have.

You spare no expense, no effort, no extra mile into trying to get that rocket off the ground. You honestly give it your best attempt.

And there are lots of experts and friends who are willing to offer their advice. Some of them even chip in. And all of it helps. You manage to pile up everything you have, and you pour it into the rocket.

All of your hopes for the future ride on this one rocket getting into space. Like, failure is not an option. Either this makes it, or you’re never getting into space. This whole thing is do or die.

You honestly pour everything into it. And, it’s time. You’ve prepared for this. You launch the rocket.

And, 30 seconds into launch, the rocket blows up.

Every hope, every dream that you had, for all that you could ever be, has just blasted out of the sky in a big, huge, fireball. Chunks of the future that you imagined are now raining into the ocean.

In this metaphor, I am the rocket. And, now, I am the wreckage. I tried to get into college. I tried to get away from my family, and into adulthood. I used every resource at my disposal. And my every resource wasn’t enough.

And, somehow, I have to try to put something together out of the wreckage that can be gathered.

You’ve still got to have optimism. Maybe I can still put something together out of all of this. Maybe something can be saved.

But it won’t go as far as it could have. It won’t be as grand. It won’t be as special. It will never be the thing it could have been.

Here’s to the 2020s. Trying to salvage something out of the wreck.