"Hello! You Are Alive! " by Izaiah R

  Hellooooo. Yes. Hi there. Yes you. Silly little one. Making wretched noises. Welcome to the world little bag of hungry cells. In essence a literal sponge, with the highest brain plasticity and capacity to learn you will ever have in your existence; before your great decay and return into the elements of the sandbox universe. All of this on the floating asteroid you call home... I’m sorry that was a rather strong introduction. Maybe enjoy this pacifier a little, while I share some basic average human life problems. Oh, what's that? You’re more interested in your thumb? Ah yes the thumb. A wondrous sucking apparatus and wonderful choice. Very comforting … but you’ll upgrade to sucking your mother’s nipple in a few short hours, because sustenance and all. It’s important, trust me. It allows you to better grow and become a young healthy grub of subsistence to where you’ll be expected to do some things here and there. Minor in the start. Kinda big in the middle. Meaningful in the end. Or maybe you’ll waste it. Eventually after a couple many full moons you will find yourself going to a stereotypically brick structure with no clue what anything is, with other small walking squawking little cherubs that just know how to say, “HIIIII!!” really loud awkwardly in a damn adorable manner or that the sky is blue. You’ll say, “HIIIII!!” back. Suddenly it’s a friend. The hieroglyphics on the wall will start to make sense. Drawing the connection that a DHA, OH, and JUH equals a fluffy companion that is commonly referred to as a ‘dog’. Congratulations, your first step to being a more exceptional human being was taken. Few years of memorizing irrelevant things, parents divorce, grandpa passes, cousin marries, adopt a vertebrate friend and to remember barely a third of everything. One must love the brain for its storage efficiency. The game of life continues on but it’s principals are the same. Most do a few years on a larger campus with more buildings, mostly retaining Hitler equal bad and how to sparknotes. Graduate with a paper that probably came from the Amazon saying “YOU ARE READY FOR LIFE”. Realize you don’t know what you’re doing. Panic. Continue on. Go thousands into debt for college, or enter the workforce or the military. Not that one cares what you want anyway, you’re just another breathing corpse. They don’t share your goals or desires. On each application remove any personality and be ‘normal’, because no one cares about your sock collection passion, how impressive your card tricks are or any other of your idiosyncratic pleasures; only just how well you can follow rules. No one
believes in you, until one day they do. For the time being stick with your side hobby and the chosen path. Fondly reminiscing on the happier times. When life was Mario Kart or dancing with cousins past midnight. In comparison to the utter hell you live in now. Give it some years. Some depression. Lack of purpose to spice it up. Get Lost. Age more. Maybe suicidal thoughts? Alcohol. Sex. Lots of that ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) . Both are excellent coping mechanisms and while doing that perhaps consider finding someone who will tolerate/deal with your quirky nature and not just do it for the looks/pleasure. Hit the 10,950 day mark also known as 30. Congratulations. You made it past the worst, maybe but you still let your crippling fear of others hold you back despite being GROWN. Ironic how we still are victims of basic instinct despite advancements Galileo, Socretes or Einstein would’ve wet themselves over. We don’t have Atlantis but if you were to tell people 100 years ago what today is like, they wouldn’t believe you. Have the mid life crisis understanding a typical natural death is closer than ever somewhere in between the 30 to 40 year marks or anytime after realizing how much time you wasted. Vow you won’t waste anymore time. Vow you won’t hesitate anymore. Then forget that because of your fear or self sabotage. Continue the path you’ve taken. Play it safe. Stay in your lane. Keep the course. Don’t kanoodle. Stay in the miserable, easier path. Sacrificing your happiness and unwillingness to be remarkable in the name of image for people you don’t care about. We all have debts to pay and you apparently can’t pay them if you compromise your perception or inability to be flawed. Get older. Get wiser. Regrets start to pour in as life reflection begins. Queue the why questions you already know the answers to. Why did I let the one run away from me and not tell her that I loved her and just wanted to adore her for our lives? Why couldn’t I get over my embarrassment and give mom one last hug and “I love you”? Why was I too ‘busy’ to cheer up grandma down the street after she lost grandpa? Why did I hesitate and question everything? Why did I care so much about what people perceived of me? What one would do if time could fall back. Return the in-exchangeable currency of time for the better hopeful outcome of a new life. Instead only gaining wisdom and allowing more reflection. Yet you still fear exposure. Realize that no one really knows why they are here or what they are doing here and that we are all trying to cope with that. Everything breathing dies eventually; nature, she is under no obligation to grant you another successful beat, but at will start another new one and so is the cycle called life. One day
you will follow suit in whatever manner you believe in, passing on into whatever you think is the right answer to death; but the universal answer will be the return of life into the ground which it was borne from; in a grave. In your final waking moments, as the life hourglass empties you will probably be there afraid and unaware of your future, the same principles which dictated the majority of your life. Hopefully moments before your passing you’ll wonder of the good moments, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly. Hopefully it’ll flash through and you’ll be content. Or maybe you wasted it all. Still, yet to think this is all predicated from your decisions and choices you make in the ‘today’ but most don’t see that. So please dear little one, choose wisely and It’ll serve you some good. Choose the stars, not the ground. Choose happiness, not misery. Choose solace in the wrongs and empathize. Take good action, for it will determine your destiny. 
 
*Just a small note to those who finished reading this. First, thank you, secondly if you were wondering yes I am fine and thirdly this is not intended to convey a sad message and if it doesn’t make complete sense that is also a way to interpret this. Though if it did make you sad, I would advise to eat some oranges. Those always make me feel better.