On life, youth, and tensor bandages

Life begins when you buy your first tensor bandage.

Let me explain.

Perhaps the most gorgeous thing about being "young," so to speak, is the relative lack of "stuff." Sure, I have a room full of "stuff" at my parents' house, but if I were to sort through it there would be maybe a box of books that I would keep.

At this exact point in time, I have no responsibilities. I have a backpack full of clothes, my laptop and a cellphone bill I rarely pay. That's it.

But my gorgeous freedom is overshadowed by the pernicious threats of adulthood – multiple bank accounts, decisions that must, must always take money into consideration, even tensor bandages.

I'll admit, a tensor bandage might be a good thing to have. If I carry it in my big backpack, it might come in handy, should I ever injure myself in the woods or need to use it, I don't know, to suspend food high in a tree away from my campsite, or even if I sprain/fracture/just scratch up my ankle but am a wuss. Sure.

But at what cost? Soon, my bag will be full of things, full of the accoutrements of life that adults magically have and I do not yet. Next thing you know, I'll own a full-on first aid kit. Then a cat, then a mortgage, and my very own house.

How will a house fit in my backpack?!

See, the problem is not so much that I will possess these things: that's fine, it's inevitable, really. It's not even, solely, that I will no longer have that unfettered mobility that I've so far misused or generally been too afraid to fully engage in.

It's that, with the coming of these things, I'm gradually changing, morphing into this "adult" – a person not necessarily more intelligent or ambitious or even different from me in any tangible way – but the owner and executor of all these things. They will be me, whether I want them to or not. I will be them. This isn't anti-materialistic in any way: I can't wait to have my own pots that are shiny and new and perfect, and get to use them, only me. Rather, it's a lament for the way that, with every purchase, my sense of freedom will be replaced with burden, my romanticism with cynicism, my dreams with reality. Every tensor bandage becomes one less person or place or thought to fall in love with, and buying these things is not worth having these other, never-things, stolen from me.

Am I being silly, childish even, exaggerating the point? I wish that I was. But with every year, every layer of books read and conversations had and friends made and lost, I grow a little bit stronger and so much more weight is put on me.

I think I'm strong and beautiful and perfect; I think I can do anything. It's always that way, always, right up until the second that your ankle gives –