Nesting Dolls

You shouldn’t stay

We’ll never change and I can’t recognize you at all

Nothing’s the same

It’s all been arranged in a way keeping me out

I don’t want to feel like this

Ever ever ever ever again

I don’t want to feel like this

Ever ever ever ever ever again

When we were young and everything’s magical

Then it all disappeared

I wasn’t sure, but you were persistent and I was so drawn to it

I don’t want to feel like this

Ever ever ever ever ever again

I don’t want to feel like this

Ever ever ever ever ever again

Whenever I listen to Circa Survive, I can’t help it. It kills me how good they are. All of a sudden I am reduced to a college student cooped up in a small dorm room in the middle of an east coast winter, wondering what love is. Where it went. And why the universe decided it was me they wanted to play that sad little game on.

Consumed. That is what I was. Obsessing over things 3,000 miles away that I couldn’t control. What ever happened to that version of myself? Did I leave him there? Or am I still lugging his shadow with me? I miss that kid. I miss feeling things. Every minor situation seemed like the end of the world.

All I would need is five minutes with the boy. Five minutes. I would tell him what he needed to hear, that everything was okay, because that’s what he had to hear. That life isn’t a race. Love isn’t a race. There is time to negotiate with; time is the only leverage we have when we’re young; it’s also the leverage against us when we age.

Kid, you can’t survive at this rate. Eventually you’re going to run out of bullets. You can only smoke ’em if you got ’em.

In your head you might be the most clever young man of all time. I get that. But if you’re as clever as you think you are, then you’ll get ahead of this before it storms in and dismantles your reality. You know it’s coming. You’ve been waiting for it. So what’s stopping you from changing?

I’ve made choices since I was your age… choices that have been very wrong and very poorly thought out. This is never going to change, I’m afraid. You are a gambler. I like that about you. I’m a gambler, too. Sometimes you do things with the best intentions, that in your heart you know means well, but in the end they don’t pan out. That is life. But like I already said, if you are clever, you will be clever enough to turn this around. If anybody can do it it’s you. I know it’s you.

Wait, are you even still listening? Kid, I’m talking to you. It hasn’t even been five minutes yet.