Seven Things You Will Never Know
By Thoughtis
1. You don’t know why things are different between you and your best friend. You don’t know why things feel off. They just do. And here you are, feeling this immense amount of pressure to make it feel how it used to, and you both end up failing. You’re at lunch surrendering to the things you can’t control. When we were younger, we could blame everything on something tangible but it’s not like that anymore. Relationships shift in the night when you’re unconscious. And when you wake up, you find out you were robbed but don’t even bother finding the culprit.
2. You don’t know why you didn’t get the job. Your outfit was impeccable — very “23-year-old who deserves a job” — and the interview went swimmingly. You talked about your favorite books and your respective hometowns. Time just flew. You were supposed to be there for only thirty minutes but it turned into an hour. You left the office feeling like a million bucks but that slowly got depleted when you never heard back. When they finally informed you that they went with someone within the company, your spirit had become an overdrawn bank account.
3. You don’t know why this jerk isn’t texting you back. Maybe they don’t like you or are scared they like you too much. (Does the latter ever happen though? Do people ever get freaked out, like in a negative way, when they actually like someone and they know the person likes them back? Maybe they do. If so, we’re doomed.) You’re thinking of a myriad of different things while waiting for that response back. Most of which are some variant of “I’m not good enough. I probably smell weird. How am I supposed to get someone to love me when they can’t even send me a damn text message?” You’ll never know the real reasons why they aren’t going to text you back. Trust me. It’s better not knowing.
4. You don’t know if you’re going to transition well to adulthood and get a nice paying job. You don’t know if you’re ever going to get things the same way your parents did. Buying a house, 401ks, health insurance: are any of these things guaranteed to anyone anymore? What are the true markers of adulthood if we have to keep on living paycheck to paycheck, can’t afford to raise a family, or even buy a nice winter coat? How will we know if we made it?
5. You don’t know why you hooked up with that disgusting person years ago. You had no interest in seeing them naked and then it just happened. This foreign body was on top of you and trying to make your insides feel good when all you wanted to do was curl up in a ball and watch Friday Night Lights. It’s amazing how many things we do without knowing the rationale behind it. We spend our days doing everything with a sense of purpose and then, all of a sudden, we just become possessed. I feel like we do things that are out of character because we need to shock ourselves. Self-awareness can be overrated and tiresome. By sleeping with someone who repulses you, we’re reminded that we don’t know ourselves completely.
6. You don’t know why you remember some people and forget others. It seems like you’re always missing people who never miss you back. Can that, like, stop?
7. You don’t know math. You don’t need to know math. Math is unknowable.