SEPTEMBER

 September 1st, 2026

Today allegedly starts the later half of the 2020s, which feels mind boggling to say.

It was humid in the city today, but there was a nice breeze. August really ushered in September beautifully. On my end, it was a busy day. Filled with busy work. And busy thoughts. And busy errands afterwards. Now I'm home, and I'm thinking of how this isn't a Summer I can do over. It'll be crystallized in time - the Summer I turned twenty-five. I couldn't imagine myself at twenty-five until I was seventeen years old. 

This realization prompted me to go back in my camera roll - back to some screenshots I wrote in 2019. It prompted me to think of myself at eighteen. To be in her head, and reflect on her dreams and hopes. Does it make me a failure to be flailing in place at twenty-five? Does it reflect negatively on me, if I've flipped her world inside out in search of a peace that may or may not ever come? 

There are so many opportunities to look ahead and daydream, and I'm as much a dreamer as I am a planner. After I walked back to my car from the train station, I drove a block down to my dermatologist's office. I had some time to kill, and my brain decided I didn't do enough to blow up my calories for the day, and I found myself walking into the ice cream parlor across the street. Two scoops of mint chocolate chip ice cream that I wolfed down in the car before heading into my appointment. On my way back to the car, I saw a graffitied mural, and briefly it took me someplace else. Someplace in the distant future, when all of this mess and confusion was shoved aside, and I finally found myself in the arms of a man who loved me. In a house that felt like my own, that was lived in as though living there wasn't a temporary condition - like I was no long just transient. In what felt like a nest of friends. In a life that I didn't feel dumped into and trapped within. For a brief moment, I was there. I felt the ease, sweet as the cool breeze blowing through me. Now, I am wondering, was that another fantasy, or a reality not yet fully actualized. 

Today was really about time travelling. Traversing the past, present, and future all at once. On one hand, I was fifteen again, wondering and wondering. Then, I was twenty eight, or thirty two - neither of those ages are fully visible in my twenty five year old mind just yet, but they will soon. 

So much to ask myself:

Will I ever get the chance to finish my college degree?

In two years' time, what's next?

When I no longer have my youth on my side, how do I explain myself?

Is all that I am now, all I will ever be? 

Will I ever fall in love?

Will it always feel this much like a foolish, fruitless endeavor? 

Will I ever know peace amongst others?

Will I ever stop feeling inherently deficient?

Will I ever get a chance to build 777 Iris Avenue from the ground up? 

I am going to bed, but today gave me much to think about. 

I am listening to CTRL falling in love with it all over again. 

- vetiveroil