Stuck in 2.0.s

By Devina

We sat down for muffins and tea, and my friend said, “Why is everyone getting married and engaged and pregnant?”

“One more stamp and we can get a free cinnamon roll. Let’s celebrate,” I said, knowing that saying that wouldn’t cheer her up. I mean, seriously, what would?

We are still young, or so they say. We still have time to explore what we want and don’t want, travel and see new places, and establish our own marks in the world.

As if. But then again, who knows better?

This is the age of confusion. We question and wonder how in the world we got here. What happened to college days? Those fun nights sitting at the bar, talking about difficult essays and impossible exams. The days of job hunting and haunting frustration.

The anxiety before going to work has vanished into thin air. Work itself has become a part of us. We can’t live without it, but we are not loving it either.

It’s just simply there.

A dash of romance excites us, but a full blown relationship scares us. “I don’t have time to commit” has become one of the most spoken statements. So we drown ourselves in romantic comedy movies. We are good with them, really, they can fulfill our stupid, irrational desires for the next couple of days, dreaming of some fictional characters as our love interests. When we run out of that, we put on another movie. Or read another book.

Whatever most convenient should do the trick.

TV shows mark our timelines. Life will start again when season 7 of Game of Thrones picks up next year, until then it’ll be this limbo of boredom.

Drinking wine alone or with friends has no difference. Sometimes the state of being alone is more appealing. Sitting on my bed, laptop on playing some YouTube video, stuffed animals lining up next to me, alone and at peace. That is what sounds good to me these days.

But routine is numbing me. Every social event stings like an acupuncture needle. Lasts a second and numbs you for half an hour or so.

And you need to come back each time to feel the tingling sensation again. One second is all it takes to forget the empty hours.

I feel like Sisyphus, and you probably do too.

We avoid social media after awhile. After posts of engagement rings flashed around flooded our news feeds, we grew bored and decided to luck out. We only open Facebook when we got tons of notifications waiting, and they’re probably just some activities done by people we follow.

Interesting thing is that we don’t want the flashy things they have, but we want to have something that can give us some thrill in life as well. Something that is us.

We search for what’s missing and keep failing. What is it do we need to fill in this empty hole?

Adventures? But when they’re over then we’re back to square one.

Relationships? But when they get more serious we’re terrified and want to get out.

Career? But when it goes too well we are losing time even for ourselves.

New hair? Changes? Something new? Something old? Anything?

Then one of these days something changes and we will be at peace for few months, if new routine is what we get then we will be happy with it for a little bit. Then we go back to numb state and start questioning everything again.

Every single damn time.

And they say as we grow older we will see more and understand more. We always learn new things every day. But we will always want something more, we are never satisfied. We are stuck in the deadly circle of “You are still young, explore” to “Why are you wasting your time?” to “What the hell are you doing?” to “You don’t want this anymore” to “What do you really want?” to “It’s okay, you are still young, explore.”

And there isn’t an end to this, or it seems like it.

So we just go back to our rooms, bottles of wine in our hands, laptop ready to blast out some TV show marathon, and we chill until there’s better things to do.