Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.37

Stressed Out
Twenty One Pilots

Dark, my friend, is back
A child
A warm lonesome
Balding
Sincere
Reverberant
What use is technology, anyhow
A fat man finishes

Lyrics.
A friend at camp was listening to Twenty One Pilots and talking to another girl about how much she loved them. She said "Have you heard them? They're so good!" This, to me.
I looked at her and said "Oh? I don't much like boy bands."
I think it was the greatest burn of all time. The most casual, unthinking destruction of a person, accomplished by accident in an attempt to be funny. I'm sorry, Jelly. If I could take back time, to the good old days, I would.

Maybe I'm just not like the rapper here, but I don't envy my childhood. Mom, don't feel bad. I had a huge accumulation of advantages and privileges. I had a loving family, I was lucky and rich and healthy, but I don't need the past anymore. Even as I lose things from that time, there's nothing better there than I can see going forward. Even through the divorce, my losses, my loneliness, and whatever strange half-destitution you would call living in an RV you can't drive away from your parent's house, I have no desire to go backward.
I see and pity people who peaked in high school, who talk about their children's accomplishments to live vicariously through their sporting achievements or their academic records. I think a lot of people shake their heads and laugh at those sorts of itchy-sad people. But I also see and pity people who peaked in college, who had the most intelligence and success they'll ever have, who get into a workforce and develop soul-rashes that don't heal, great scabrous welts that they stuff into suits and carry with them because they'll never get back that brief moment of experimentation when they were still building themselves and learning who they are, free of the saddle that rubs raw their sores. I also see and pity people who peaked in childhood, who cast their eyes back to the time when nothing was expected of them, they had everything they wanted, and they didn't know the troubles of the future, whose entire idea of a good time is to suddenly realize they didn't have anything in their head to worry about for a brief time. Maybe pity is the wrong word, but I don't empathize with these sorts, because when I look backwards, I don't see a long chain dragging me down, nor a staircase leading me up, nor any such thing. I don't feel nostalgia because I have never been so satisfied as I am in the present.

This all to say: my sister used to think Blurryface was the name of the song, or the album, or something.

Stephen.
I can't agree with what you said. I think you're better off today than you were as a child. I can't expound on it here, but you've never been more Stephen than today, and the same will be true of tomorrow when the clock finally rolls us inexorably there. You've never been more able, more intelligent, more independent, more empathetic, more correct than now. You've never taken less crap, walked with more pride, or gotten more of what you wanted than now.
Stress is constant. Don't let the fog of your memory convince you that backwards is somehow better when you know that it's not.