Midlife Crisis

October 19, 2017

We are seventeen and we're having a midlife crisis.

We were kids once, but that was then and this is

Now, and the nurturing soil over our roots had turned to

Sand, as dry and half-baked as this week's lesson plan.

One-size-fits-all school that poorly fits, like baggy pants.

Meanwhile 7 hour days rotate us through our proxy parents, training us for jobs we’ll get in,

what, half a decade?

“What’d you learn in school today?”

“I dunno.”

Optimism was beaten out of us with the blunt edge of a letter B grade.

Our awe of the world’s inner mechanism is replaced by exhausted irony, and with that

Childhood disappears around the corner like a lunch line, our dead-eyed ‘future leaders of the world’ stumbling forward.

Backs twisting under the weight of six classes.

At home, once cushioned words from our parents mouths turn jagged and sharp.

Adulthood, baring its teeth.

Responsibility stacking one on another like textbooks to loom over you,

a crushing weight.

So it's not our fault we're “cynical”

“Sarcastic”

“Jaded” -

We're just left asking questions.

How do I pay taxes?

"Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell."

How do I pay rent?

A² + B² = C²

These minds + this school =

implosion.

And we aren't even twenty yet

We can't even vote.

And we're having a midlife crisis.

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