I've been feeling homesick for my early twenties lately.

Some friends of mine and I were discussing, just the other night, a time not so long ago when we were all fun and exciting and interesting. Back in the day it was nothing for my friends and I to start drinking tequila at 12:30 in the afternoon, still be going strong watching the sun come up from the Craggy Gardens overlook, then head to Waffle House (otherwise known as the Awful Waffle) for scattered covered and smothered and coffee and a million cigarettes before heading in to work for a long day of washing other people's dishes. Back then, I could do that a couple days in a row before it started to catch up with me. And when it did, all I'd have to do was sleep for about 12 hours and I'd be good as new, ready to go again. Ready to wake up and decide to drive to Tennessee for the hell of it, or swimming at Graveyard Fields, or watching a meteor shower from the top of a mountain or running through the woods looking for Eric Rudolph, or dancing around the campfire or playing drums or telling ghost stories or playing hide and seek in graveyards or finding blue fairies at Cove Creek at midnight on Midsummer's Eve.

Life back then was chaos. And I'm sure that I'm romanticizing some of the details in my head, the way we all do in hindsight. But it seemed like the world was bigger then, brighter, fuller. I can remember waking up in the morning then and just being happy to be alive, so full of wonder, so ready to jump up and face whatever was waiting on me.

These days, it's all I can do to drag my sorry carcass out of bed in the morning. I have to hit the snooze like a million times, and I still almost always have to rush to keep from being late. I fucking HATE being late. I hurt all over, my creaky old bones crack and pop whenever I move, I'm tired all the time and it feels like my spine is lacking some sort of lubrication that it needs to function properly. Last week I finally gave in and decided to stop squinting at shit and go get my damn glasses. Today, for like five hours, I mostly lost my voice for no known reason. I'm getting old and falling apart and it seems like there is nothing at all I can do about it except watch it happen.

I can't help but wonder; is it all we get, that few years between eighteen and twenty something, that bright window of time before we stop having fun and start being grownups? Do we hit the wall and grow the fuck up already? Do we get mortgages and bills and responsiblities and blahblahblah, is that what we woke up in our shitty apartment in our early twenties feeling so goddamn hopeful about? We never realize how beautiful we are when we're young, either; it's only looking back at pictures of ourselves that we realize that whatever petty insecurities we nurtured back then, they were stupid and we were beautiful and strong and all those imaginary flaws back then were nothing, nothing compaired to the slow inexhorable march of time across our faces in the mirror now.

So. There you go. What the fuck?

Blame all this emo on the fact that this was Mama Ro's 11th straight day at work, and that tomorrow makes 12. Blame it on the fact that my throat hurts and my back hurts and my head hurts and there's some wierd shit going on with my tummy that I don't even want to get into. Blame it on Chris and Beefs and Al for reminding me that once upon a time I used to be interesting. Blame it on all work and no play makes Ro=Debbie Downer. Blame it on the douchebag "customer"( I use the term lightly, since the useless turd maker never actually buys anything) who gave me a goddamn 10 % off Waffle House coupon in an attempt to somehow win me over despite my obvious and visible hatred of him, which started the whole stupid discussion to begin with.

Actually, if you wanted to do something to cheer me up, you could find that creepy fucker and kick him for me, three or four times, right in the face...