I’ve downloaded the new Update on my life and it’s all just a ruse to get me to buy a newer, better body. It has a slower metabolism, refuses to recharge to stay up until late hours of the night watching The Office for the sixth time in a row, and forgets to look both ways when jay-walking.
And I have to wait a whole year before the new update comes out; rumor has it they’re thinking of making me buy a lot of unnecessary alcohol and gambling in Iowa.
So, while I wait for the better version of me to come out, I’ll have to be like a sitting duck in my second decade of life.
I’ve created a list of what I can *legally* do this year and what I can *legally* do next year:
Now that I’m 20 I can-
Confidently tell everyone I’m 20 and then hear them say “no, way, I thought you were like, so much younger.”
Not buy drugs
Tell myself I’m an adult now and I should try to cook a real meal.
throw away the kids coloring books and invest in those aesthetic, boujee adult coloring books with too much detail and impossible standards.
Be a quirky college student who goes to too many coffee shops and talks about world issues with the facts I learned from Buzzfeed.
Go to the Art Institute of Chicago alone and walk around looking at Van Gogh pieces while making a serious, invested face when, in fact, I’m only waiting for a hot, artsy boy to tap me on the shoulder and say “Van Gogh? more like Van Gosh, you’re pretty.”
And, finally, try and take some vitamins.
But, when I’m 21, I can-
Buy drugs.
Buy lots of drugs.
Go to Colorado and purchase said drugs.
Go into a bar and order something overpriced.
Get more drugs.
Get married in Mississippi without my parents knowing.
Be charged as an adult.
Realize I really need to get into the dating scene.
Have a quarter(ish)-life crisis that would make a 40-year-old cringe.
Be halfway done coloring in one of my adult-coloring books.
Try yoga
Hate yoga
Buy. Oh. So. Many. Drugs.
As you can see, there’s a lot more excitement in store for me next year (and a lot of nights where I may or may not blackout.)
So here I am, Jafei 2.0. The Jafei with just as much acne when she was 14 and twice the amount of anxiety. A girl with poor social skills, but great winged eyeliner. I’ve also started thinking more critically, recently; which is what all my teachers in high school pushed us to do when we read Catcher in the Rye, but all I can remember was that Holden was kind of a dick… Anyway, I’ve been really pursuing the meaning to my existence now that I’m older:
I’ve been alive twenty years and I keep counting how many years I have left to live and it’s around 60 which sounds like a good number until you realize that time is a construct and we’re all doomed to potential mediocrity and indecisiveness leading us to live half-assed lives where we’ll retire late into our 70’s because prices will skyrocket and the human species is like a virus that keeps multiplying to infect the earth and destroy it so we… am I rambling?
I just mean to say, there’s a lot of pressure to live the right life.
For the next so-and-so years I’m going to live, I hope to make the best of it. I hope to do all I can to save the earth, end world hunger, and create peace between all the countries in the world.
JK, I’ll probably just try to not die from day to day and hope that I can get my lazy ass up at some point to make money, food, and find me a man (or a woman. In this day and age I really don’t know where I stand; I might not even be on the sexuality Spectrum. Maybe I’m into aliens or something. who knows.)
This is your new and improved Jafei, signing off. Until next time, my loyal followers (i.e. my parents.)