I Want To Live

24/04/2020

My name is Thomas McClure, and I don’t feel like I have lived.

I’m twenty years old now, approaching twenty-one, and I am missing major regrets.

Every time I’m hanging with my friends, the best people who are between a few years younger than me and a few years older than me, they talk about their mistakes and triumphs in life. I cannot relate. I mean, I’ve made mistakes, plenty of them, but not important experience mistakes.

They tell me of the times they’ve gotten so drunk they literally can’t remember certain nights, they tell me of absolute ragers that they could laugh and cry about, they tell me about the origins of all their inside jokes coming from times they’ve done really crazy shit, they tell me about their broken hearts and how they wished they never had those months of connection, they tell me of the times they had nights out in big towns and cities where they just crashed at other’s houses or even just crashed out in the street, they tell me of the times they did things with people they enjoyed at the time but regretted later, they tell me of the times they lived to regret those times. I’ve never had any of that.

When I lament that I have never had any of that, they tell me that I really don’t want any of that because, although great at the time, they regret it later. They tell me that I don’t want to have the parties they had and continue to have because I will regret the mornings after. I wish I could regret the mornings after.

I missed out in high school, I wasn’t confident enough to live and wasted it being anxious and playing video games alone. I remember the few times I asked about hanging out with friends beyond gaming and they would tell me how boring it would be. By the time I left school and turned eighteen, I found out that every one of my friends had been going to parties and getting drunk and making “bad life choices” that actually didn’t have a negative impact on their lives, and in fact was probably great learning experiences in their lives, and was just something they wished they could have not done. By that point we had drifted apart, and when I tasted alcohol for the first time when I turned eighteen, there was no one left to drink with.

For years after, and to this day, I tried to capture my real teenage years. I hosted proper parties at least once every two or three months, but by then my friends were either partied out, too young being friends I made when we were in high school and they were years below me, or too old being matured child-having adult friends I made when I entered college, or they were the few friends I had who were still my age but only saw me as an option and would agree to come unless something cooler came up, which was always minutes before it started. I’d often invite three times the amount I was allowed to have because of this, even with that I never had a party where there were more than I was allowed. And to bring this really to it’s lowest point, there were a few planned parties where everyone canceled last minute. That sucked ass.

I also wasn’t allowed to have people smoking in the house, or have people walking between my room and the door, so it was essentially a “if you want a smoke you have to leave the party” policy which was a death sentence for any party to be sure. My parties were lame, let’s not beat around the bush, but I tried to make do with what I had. With half of my friends they weren’t allowed to host a party so I was the only option and for the other half I was so inexperienced and had so many rules I had to enforce or I just wasn’t allowed another party that the party itself was nothing compared to their usual ragers. It also didn’t help that the latter half often had their own much greater parties but never invited me despite their constant assurance that they’ll remember to next time.It’s almost like I would be more experienced if I was given more experience, but I suppose it’s like the old parenting technique of assuming the kid learns due to enough time passing that they ought to know by now, without actually ever teaching them, and then refusing to teach them because they ought to already know. Brilliant.

I once had a girl try to reassure me that the party we were in wasn’t the worst party she’d been to because she had been to one far worse and then began to describe another party of mine that was also at my house but she had forgotten it was mine, despite remembering it was my house, because she simply didn’t remember me being there. She was drunk but that still stung like hell.

Cut to my twentieth birthday. It was the closest I’ve gotten to living. I invited as many people as I could and got a lot of alcohol and was ready to party. By now I had made a lot of friends, but honestly I’ve never felt like a main friend to anyone really, just sort of an option. I was rarely anyone’s best friend, but I did have a lot of friends and for that I am so grateful. The party started and a bunch of people did make it, more than half dropped out beforehand but that’s how it does I suppose. We got drunk, we had fun. I couldn’t leave my house because I still had to be responsible, and everyone had to be confined to my room, I still live with my parents, so most people started to leave and hang out with each other around town, which sucked. Almost everyone with money and ID left to party in bigger towns, leaving me and a few others on my birthday, which sucked but I'm glad they were having fun. Nothing big happened that night, nothing important, just a really good but not that memorable of a party. It was the first time people my age and older finally came to one of these things and it was worth it, they had great banter and great stories, but they also listed out their good old days, acting like they were ancient and their good days behind them. I also found out that everyone younger than me had more life experiences too, teenagers just over the legal limit were telling me of their ‘good old days’ when they were drinking at aged fourteen. That sucked. Although I enjoyed that night, I still couldn’t help but be left behind.

From then I grew a lot closer to the old and new friends who were closer my age, but also not long after that I got a job where I worked weekend nights. Now I was finally being invited out to parties and real ragers where I didn’t have to be the responsible one and ensure we kept quite in my one small room, but I was working all the time so I missed most of them. Several times, when I got off work and read all the messages about how wild a party was, I’d rush there as it was apparently still happening, only to find everyone coming down and sinking into the Sunday of drunken levels, the regret washing over them and their desire to sleep, and the few still up just telling me about all the crazy hilarious things they did.

Most of the time I was the guy who was not drunk enough to be sleepy and so, in their somber moods, would tell me their woes and I would listen. This is when it really started to hit. I remember staying up until five in the morning listening to someone lament a relationship that lasted less than three months. They went on about how happy they were, how often they went out, how they felt understood, how they liked being intimate with someone, how it wasn’t like the past six people they were in a similar relationship with, this one made them happy in the moment and not trying to plan for happiness. They would then tell me never to love. Never to connect with people because it always ends in pain.

Man, I wish I could feel some of that. I’d rather feel pain over something lost than pain over never having it in the first place. It must be better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all. Those people, yes it has happened with several people, were like this for several weeks after and then they would find someone new and the cycle would start again. It still happens to this day. When I talk to my friends, it still happens. They tell me about their regrets in their past and would connect with each other over shared “wow that sucked” experiences while I simply listen and feel left out in life and missing on these experiences that, although would be regrettable, would also help me grow and mature and feel like a normal functioning person, and then, still sitting and listening, I feel guilty for internally undermining their struggles and regrets.

My friends are still the coolest people I know, don’t get me wrong, I love them to bits and they’re struggles and regrets and real traumas are very valid, it’s just that they don’t really understand me. That’s on me, for the most part, since I’m anxious and not great at talking about myself openly without feeling like I’m complaining and not explaining.

I just want to live. I want to be at a house party where I’m not worrying about where everyone is all the time. I want to have a connection, any kind of connection, with someone even if they rip it from me later on. I want to look back with people on shared memories where we can say something other than “yeah we drank and talked and it was nice”. I want to go out with people on the town that doesn’t just mean I’m brought along so it doesn’t seem like a date between two people. I want to get so drunk I make a scene of myself rather than simply blending into the background. I want to be the center of attention in a good way. I don’t wan to be that person that people see in background of a photo and exclaim that they didn’t remember me being there.

There’s more. There’s a lot more. But I think I’ve made my point.

Honestly when I started this I was worried I wouldn’t have enough to say but when I open up I really open up. Turns out I have a lot to say, really. Catastrophesinacup eat your heart out. But really, getting this out was healthy for me. I’m not sure if I could open up to real people like this, it’s much better to just shout it into the voice that is the internet. Schrödinger’s audience. I both feel listened to and understood as well as hidden and not like an attention seeker, as well as also ultimately alone. Feedback would be nice, very much appreciated, if you don’t mind.

Figuratively saying that all out loud, I understand that I have lived a little. Far from as much as I want, considerably far from as much as I need, but compared to many others I’ve probably lived a lot. I’m privileged, and not just as in I’m white and cisgender and a man in a society that has been, over countless generations, molded to make me one of the most advantaged member of society excluding class. I mean I am privileged to have lived a life I have lived in regards to experiences and friends. My life could have been so much worse, and yet it’s beyond simply ‘good’.

In the past few weeks, since we’ve gone into lockdown, I’ve been in a group chat. It doesn’t sound like much but for me it is the world. At the start of the lockdown I found out about Zoom and with a few friends, who now literally had no excuse to not be able to hang out, I set up a few meetings where we essentially hung out online and drank a lot and chatted shite and played party games and even spent a few hours saying nothing but being with one another. That was nice.

Then one of them made a group chat on messenger and added me to it and I continued an inside joke someone made in the parties and we were called ‘Boi Pussies’. It’s gone through many iterations since then, now we’re all ants for some reason and the queen may be a totalitarian, but she’s our totalitarian.

These past few weeks have been the most included I’ve been in years. I’ve connected with old friends, hung out with current friends, and even made some new absolutely brilliant friends who I want to get to know more of. These people have gotten me through lockdown. I love them with all my heart and although they don’t know me too well and I’m still too anxious to say half the good things I want to say, they laugh at and heart emoji react to the half I do say, and it may not be much to you but everything is relative, and to me that’s a lot.

I’ve had good times during lockdown. I’ve made friends and interacted with great people pretty much everyday now. When they call or react to a message I send, I feel like I’m living. When lockdown is over I hope this doesn’t go away, I hope things get better and I hope I’m afforded opportunities to live a lot more, but for now this is living for me, and I am here for it.

So, in honor of the ‘Boi Pussies’ and our online sesh’s'; to the timeless nights we won’t remember, with the friends we’ll never forget.

Love you all xX

- Thomas McClure