The beginning is just the end working backwards

A tingling sensation snakes its way up my arm and I know that this is the end. This is how I go at age twenty-four.

I didn't even make it to my 25th birthday. Such a shame...it really, really fuckin' sucks. I can feel this abysmal black's engulfing grin devouring me in one gulp, it's all so tragically emo. The freezing hot wash of nausea. The intense disgust. And my book had never been published! It still remained in the dusty back files of my flash drive, becoming lame with every passing year of irrelevance. Without the ego-boosting of a publication, I couldn't look at the stories anymore for fear of self-deprecation. For writing such banal drivel. How do you know when something is truly good? Or even just done?

My reflection says it all. Dark navy pleated pants that sit awkwardly on my hips - not quite high enough to be in-style and not low enough to be comfortable. I feel bloated. They know exactly where to pinch the hip paunch so as to remove any inclination of attractiveness, and to make the wearer conscious of being unattractive. Underwear lines protrude through the pocket-less back, like they're at war with the pants for ugly domination. There's a lot to be said for the security a hooded sweatshirt affords a person.

My image blurs and then buckles.

I'm sitting on the end of my bed. I tried right? Got a stack of rejection letters to prove that. But that doesn't pay the bills, right? Maybe I am a bad writer. It's easy to have a misplaced sense of superiority when you're sitting in a fiction workshop class with frat and sorority kids who write about their wild stripper/keg parties. "It was fuckin' crazy man!"

I look up at the image in front of me one more time, but it's washed away. The room is quiet in the early morning hours, except for the muffled pleas to not be such a failure.

The back and forth argument is confusing. I have a degree, shouldn't I use it? I need to make mom and dad proud after everything they've done for me. Everyone hates their job and why should I be different? That's life. Writing's not a real job. You can't make any money from writing.

It's surprisingly easy to submit to this argument. The practical choice. The "I won't look like a loser at family gatherings" choice. The choice that washes you in the warm glow of approval after telling your parents. I suppose it feels like the "adult" decision and the one that's needed to make after two years of drifting. I'm just being a baby. Yet here I am now. Exposed. Crying. Uncomfortable. But, see, that's the argument! Right there!

I look at myself again. Makeup stains around my eyes and down my cheeks. Sad and pathetic. Pretty comical in retrospect.

Fuck me...it's only the first day.

You really are buried in a suit.