Once upon a time there was a kid. The kid wasn’t very pretty. The kid wasn’t very skinny. The kid wasn’t very gifted. But the kid tried. The kid tried and tried. The kid stumbled out of the gates. Sustaining all sorts of ailments. The kid persevered though. Despite the way the world was. The kid was still here. Kicking and screaming till the end. Whenever that was.

Once upon a time there was tween. The tween was hot shit. Skinnier, cooler, but most of all the tween was liked. Liked by mostly everyone. The tween played basketball. The tween thought that was the future. But everyone knows that tweenhood only lasts a brief amount of time. And when tweenhood ended, the tween looked inside.

Once upon a time there was a teen. The teen thought the world of themself. The teen ballooned to a weight unmanageable. The teen’s shirts moved from small to medium to large. This made the teen sad. Sadder than most. The teen had a couple friends. But these friends never knew what the teen was hiding inside. The teen made jokes about mortality. About ending the life. The teen was never happy. There were glimpses of hope. That maybe, just maybe, life would get better.

Once upon a time there was a young man. The young man knew what being a teen was like. He didn’t want to repeat those mistakes. He decided to get to work. To feed the beast. And he succeeded. Gained friends. Gained happiness. But he kept thinking, “how long does this last?”

There is a man. Growing up still. Trying to experience the next thing after the next thing. No longer taking stock of what is in the present. His mind is stuck in the future. Driving on a path that he hopes will be paved. The bumps have come and gone. And while he knows new bumps are along the road, for whatever reason, he’s scared. He’s scared because the bumps along the road only get bigger and bigger. And he doesn’t want to live like this any more. He quit it all. To try and focus on the present. But he can’t. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t. I can’t.

Good luck Charlie.