the bittersweetness of youth, or, a burnt out high school senior's sleep deprived ramblings

It's Monday, 12/15/2025, 10:16 in the morning as I start type this out. I'm in school right now, free period, haven't touched my senior project in weeks. Writers block, so I'm doing this instead.


In English we finished reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray. It's an alright book, I don't have much to say on it other than it uncomfortably reminded me of how I used to be. Especially the whole opium den part with the being relatively okay during the day but feeling immense guilt at night. I wanted to cry out in class "LITERALLY ME!". At night the people I've used eat at me. I've been rawdogging this existential guilt sober for the past few months, for better or worse. I like to think better though. I remember when it first hit me, the psychological dependence I had on cigarettes, how I needed to smoke a few to calm down, and how I couldn't even walk a mile at a decent pace without going out of breath.


It sickened me.


In sixth grade, when I was twelve, I was extremely fit from training Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiujitsu to a borderline competitive level. If Covid hadn't happened then chances were I'd be in Thailand doing smokers right now. Dramatic sigh here. In another life I dropped out of school to go fight in a foreign country, and in that life I'm probably much happier and well-adjusted than I am now.


Fucking hell, I sound like one of those guys who peaked doing high school football or something. Jesus.


I quit there and then though, not wanting the peak of my physical health to be when I was twelve. It was pretty easy to, I didn't feel any major withdrawal effects, other than a persistent mental niggling to smoke. That hasn't happened in a while though, so I think I'm successfully clean off of cigarettes or nicotine or cigs or nic or whatever people call it.


God, I hate the shortening of things into three letters. Just say the full thing for fuck's sake, not nic, not cig, not alc. Is it that more difficult to say the whole word? That was my old man yelling at clouds moment I fear.


Occasionally I'll get an email to myself, sent from myself from years ago. They're always nice in a bittersweet way. A sort of look back into my youth, reminding me of things that felt like the end of the of my world at the time, but I'm rather indifferent or humorous towards now.


I still remember my first love. It's engrained into the very fiber of my being now, for better or worse. I still remember how consuming it was, how madly I loved her, how nothing else in the world mattered to me, except for her.


I still remember how that heartbreak lead into a passive sense of suicidal thinking. How I had the first fight that actually meant something to me out of a need to do something good, something big, something where other people could love and appreciate me, yet I'd still face some sort of pain, some sort of difficulty, challenge, consequence. The trials and tribulations of youth. I remember my shin slamming into his thigh. The feeling of stomping on someone's ribs out as they lay on the ground. It felt just like padwork.


I don't know if any of it meant anything in hindsight. Early loves never worked. We wouldn't have worked out, together, long-term. Too similar, too different. Somehow I didn't get into legal or academic trouble for nearly crippling a person. All I got was a little footnote on my permanent record within that district. It read, don't sit me and that guy together. That was it. The year after, my freshman year, we ended up having two classes together.


That solidified to me, maybe subconsciously, that I'm not sure if anything in life really matters. For better or worse, for better or worse.