I confess that

I cry easily, and often despairingly. Like the world is broken and irremediable and that I must bear the burden of a generational shift. Like my life is doomed to an unstable series of unfulfilling endeavors and as if every decision I make will be forever etched in stone. I cry because I never want to say goodbye. Because things always come back to "this." Because I was suddenly overcome by a maddening mix of nostalgia and melancholia. Because I wish I had never. Because I wish I had. Because of recurring interconnectedness between beauty and sadness.

I laugh easily, and often boisterously. With my head thrown back, clutching my gut. Doubled over, covering my wide-open mouth, wiping away tears. I laugh because of the simple, amusing things that parade across our lives every single day. I laugh due to old inside jokes remembered like a welcome friend. Because of absurdity that would otherwise be surreal. Because of clever puns, children's speech and conceptions of the world, spot-on impressions, the theatricality of politics, the confusion that results because of cultural and linguistic difference. I laugh when my friends label real life people and situations with literary and cinematic references. I laugh because of my brothers' exaggerated accounts of what happened when we were kids.

I'm naive. I trust easily. I'm taken in by things I consider exotic and different and foreign. I romanticize. Fetishize. I construct impossible ideals only to knowingly watch them fall apart.

I'm a critic, sometimes a cynic. I notice everything out of place. I question relentlessly. I analyze choices to the point of paralysis, oblivion.

I smile a lot and often really hard. Sometimes pictures of myself scare me because of the ability to literally count my teeth because they're that big and defined.

I'm a procrastinator. I let things build up into a time-crunched frenzy, and eventually complete the task in a tiring, unnecessary marathon, propelled by the adrenaline-rush of a looming deadline.

I always take the long way. No matter what it is, it seems like there was always a shorter, more efficient way to do what I just did or to get to where I just arrived.

Things are usually not as complicated as I make them out to be.

After all these years, I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.