The Future, And How Terrifying It Is.

Hello, audience. It actually took me fifteen minutes staring at the screen after typing that to decide whether or not I actually wanted to type this blog. And then another ten after that to actually finish typing these two sentences. That should be a good clue as to just how terrifying this subject really is for me. I keep getting apprehensive and wanting to just drop it and find something else to type about. But then I stop and think, "Hey, what are you getting so worked up about? It's just the ominous, faceless, immense, inevitable, ever moving, ever changing rest of your life! :D" and then I set the laptop down, go into the fetal position, and I shudder until I don't feel like I'm going to throw up all of my organs anymore.

This fits the feeling perfectly.

I'm an 18 year old, almost 19, who graduated two years ago, bottom of my class, I have no job, no car, no plans for college, no real plans for the rest of my life. And I'm really not doing anything to change that. Why? Because the future terrifies me. The idea that I honestly don't know what's going to happen between now and the time I die haunts me pretty seriously. I know it's typical for a young person in my place to be scared of the future, and I know that it's going to happen every single time I have a major turning point in my life. But that doesn't make it any easier.

I think a lot, and when I say a lot, I mean almost constantly. Behind whatever blank look is on my face at any given time, the gears are turning. I'm constantly analyzing everything all the time, and at points, it leads me down to some very nihilistic lows. In the midst of wallowing in those mudholes, I sometimes think about the future. I think about where I want to be in life, what I want to do with myself, and where I'll be in twenty years. And I know that I'm going to be 38, almost 39, and that I'll probably be alive. Sounds like a plan, right? I'll probably still be alive? That's the best I've got?

For those of you who don't know me, I am the most rigid planner you will probably ever meet. I will spend hours for multiple days in advance planning out a perfect schedule in order to make sure everything goes exactly right, and I will stress myself out over things unnecessarily because of it. I've gotten to the point where I muscle my way into a leadership position in groups because I have to be part of the decision making process, or I will pretty much refuse to be part of the group and stand at a distance, making snide remarks about how I could have done things better. I absolutely must be in control. I'm a master of puppets if there has ever been one, and if I don't get to be, I get mad.

So, taking that into account, how can I not already have a plan for every single day of my life between now and 38-39 and beyond? How come I don't already have a job, a car, $1000 in the bank, a plan for what school I'm going to, where all my school money is coming from, where I'm going to live, when I'm going to graduate, what career I'm going to have, who I'm going to marry, how I'm going to support my family, how I'm going to retire, and where my family is going to be buried? How come I don't even know if I want to get married and have a family, or whether or not I want to go to college, whether or not I want to retire, whether or not I want to live to be old? How come I, Mister Ludeman, planner and overthinker extraordinaire, doesn't have a plan for his life?

Too good of a joke to pass up.

Honestly, because I don't want to live a planned life. I want to roll with the punches, go with the flow, make decisions as they come to me. I don't want to spend my entire life planning my next move. I just want to live. And it's hard for me to do that, because then I fall into a self-destructive period of doing absolutely nothing to compensate for all the stress I put myself through thinking and worrying. I just shut down, stop planning, stop trying to go anywhere or be anything other than what I want to be in the moment right then and there, and then I get stuck. Like I am now. And all of this is because:

The Future Is Terrifying. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month or year or ever. I don't know what the future holds, and that terrifies me. I can't say for sure that I'll have the same friends or that I'll get a good job or that my car won't break down or that I'll never have to worry where money is coming from or that I'll be happy where I am and with the choices I've made and the person I have become. And that unknowing, that inability to know for sure where my choices will lead me and who they will make me, is probably the most terrifying part. 

How do I know I'm making the choices now that will lead me to the happy future I want? How do you even define a happy future? One where you reach your goals, become everything you wanted to be and have everything you wanted to have, but that was hard work to get to, and you lost a lot along the way? Or one that was okay, decent job, you still dream of things you've always wanted but now know for sure that they're out of your grasp, but you had some good times, some happy times? If I were to end up with some terminal disease, would I be able to say I'd enjoyed the first life more or the second? The life where I was everything I wanted to be and I ended up happy, or the one where I was happy the whole way and ended up far from my dreams?

That's the most terrifying part. Forget all the rest. The most terrifying part is having to live, not knowing what is coming, and discover it one small step at a time. The most terrifying thing about the future, is that you can't stop it, and you can't skip it. You can't speed up or slow down. You can't skip to the end and read the last page when you get bored, you can't stop and read that paragraph over and over because it's the part you love most, you can't turn back the page when things are their very worst to a time when things were amazing and you were the happiest you had ever been and just live in that moment again. The future is intangible, that past is gone, and the present is all you have to work with. There's no second chances, no do-overs, no starting back at the beginning when you get to the end. You only live every second once, and the clock is always ticking. And that's what I really hate. The clock never stops moving, never for a single second. It just keeps ticking and ticking and ticking the hours away until your inevitable but unknown death, before which, you have to make something of  your life.

Can you hear it?

All the while, you sit and watch people around you make choices, make decisions, seemingly undisturbed by that annoying, torturous ticking, hiding in the back of your mind, always just below the surface, but never quiet enough for you to forget about it. That ticking that says, "They just got a second job; why don't you have one yet? They have a nice car and pay for all their own gas; where's yours? They got an amazing scholarship that means they don't have to worry about anything for the duration of their college life; what are you going to do about college? They're married and happy and have children who are all growing up to be fantastic people; what have your choices made you?"

And then you're there, at the bottom of that thinking hole that I get myself down to, and you curl up in bed and you want to give up on everything because nothing matters anyway. We're all just microscopic specks on the pale blue dot in this gigantic universe, and there's nothing we can do to escape the future.

So what do we do? How do we stop feeling like little specks? How do we shut up that ticking in the back of our heads? How do we stop comparing our success to every other person on the planet? How do we stop feeling like the expectations of everyone around us are weighing down on our shoulders? How do we stop worrying that we don't already have a plan?

How do we stop being afraid of the future?

Do you know, audience?

Or is it just me?