This Saturday finds me in a somber mood with a beer and cigar as I find myself thinking, I'm 28, I have a career, and something that sometimes resembles a life and I can't silence the question in my head, is this it? Is this who I am and what I will be?

A good friend just asked me, "What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?" To which I replied, "Not answering questions like that."

But it got me wondering, what will I be doing in 10 years? Or let me rephrase……. Will people still be telling me essentially that I am a chronically tragic underachiever? Never really living up to my potential? Will I still be inevitably failing when everything tells me I should be succeeding? Will people who I trust still prove themselves untrustworthy? Will the burden of faith grow too heavy to bear? Will the doubled edges of hope eventually cut me too deeply? Will the pains of intimacy eventually find me alone? Will I always feel like a stranger in this place, always being just slightly misperceived? Will life always be an uphill battle for me? Will ever stop saying things I regret or finding myself in situations where I just want to stop and say, "What the hell is going on?!?!"

I'm sure you'll say to me, well you reap what you sow. Or perhaps that I just need to do A, B, or C and stop doing X, Y, and Z. Or perhaps I should just try harder. And I say, if you only knew…. If you only knew what it was like to really know and understand that who you are in your most honest, relaxed, natural, and vulnerable state is a truly dislikeable person. If you only knew what it is like to wake up every day of your life and wonder just exactly how you were gonna fuck up today and hope to God that the damage can be mitigated. I'd say, imagine bearing that feeling every day of your waking existence. Wouldn't you try everything and anything? Let's say you do and let's say that there is nothing left to do or try except just to pull your team off the field and hold cheerleading tryouts. And after trying every possible option is exhausted it actually starts to appear that perhaps this defense just needed time to discern and understand and you start to feel happy and relaxed… like maybe something is finally working and not every breath will be a gasp…. Only to then look up at the scoreboard and realize you're still somehow losing….

And so I wonder, as my friend asked, what will I be doing in 10 years? Will it still be this? Is this it? Is all I have to look forward to more of the same? And I wonder how much I can possibly stand.

A colleague of mine recently told me, "Jeremiah, you're one messed up kid. Someone must have hurt you very deeply at some point." So I'm 28, I have a career, and sometimes, if I'm lucky, something that slightly resembles a life… in the right lighting... and amidst my questions, my anxieties, my trials, and my many failures and regrets, perhaps the only thing substantive that I've learned is exactly that—and I didn't need her to tell me. Maybe I am just one messed up kid. Maybe someone did hurt me. Maybe we're all messed up and hurt by others. Maybe I'm just trying my balls off to make do, to be me and somehow figure out this thing called life before my shelf life runs out, and make do with what I've got to work with. But if I don't, I sense that I'll be ok. Maybe I'll never live up to my perceived potential and maybe everything I'll ever do will do nothing but prove everyone right about me. I have a suspicion that a day is coming when men will be more than the sum of their deeds. And when that day comes I'll own all my trials and failures as my own, as part of my story in this bigger picture. Until then I pray the burden won't brake me and the wounds won't bleed me out as I wait and just try to make do…