I used to be that girl who gets straight A’s without studying and reads in her spare time, yet who parties like a wildflower as if there was no tomorrow. I was basically the epitome of YOLO before the term YOLO even existed.

I used to get lost in the um-tiss-um-tiss-um-tiss of clubs, the bliss that came with hard liquor and drugs, and the never-ending empty mouths of strangers.

I used to bask in cigarette smoke; bathe in drunken sweat; rejoice in unsentimental trivialities; and wake up in unknown territory… wondering what I had just done, who was lying in the sheets next to me, and where the fuck my life was headed.

I dated no one but blurred faces, crooked smiles, a ton of charm, and half hours of my life that I would never get back again, only to take those dates outside - or, at the very least, through the door - after the night had overstayed its welcome.

I smiled, but I never meant it. And I made that smile linger in everybody’s brains like a memory they couldn’t shake, but wanted to forget.

I remember feeling the palpable weight of fatigue from being fucked, and never loved, when all I wanted was to be kissed in the rain, serenaded with a boombox and have a guy love me so much that my death would send him in such a rage that he would either kill people and turn their meat into human meat pies or turn over to the dark side, causing my twin children to be separated at birth. 

I never got the rain kiss. I never got the boombox. I never got the meat pies or the twins. Heck, I didn’t even get to name my daughter Leia.

Had I known that my life wasn’t actually headed into the direction of some epic dramatic Hollywood movie ending, I probably wouldn’t have lived my life in such a cliched Hollywood TV show way.

I realize now that my life isn’t a movie, though. It’s a contract. A contract that I have unknowingly and unwillingly signed, sealed and delivered to future-me. Future-me who is now-me. And I am left with nothing but memories of a distant, adventurous and exciting past that I will never get to live again.

Never take your youth for granted.

Coz I can.