The boy who didn’t want to be there

There was once a boy who was really a man, but did not want to be. He did not want to be a grownup. He wasn’t like a man-child, a Kasper Hauser. He just hated growing up. Growing old was not a problem, the problem was just with growing up.

It was not as if he had had a memorable childhood or teens and yearned to hold on to it past when it was gone. In actuality, his younger years had been quite modest. Yeah, he had gone abroad and done stuff that most people had not done – the sex was great - and he painfully missed all of that, but he did not want to go back to that. That he thought would make him just a plain sad git.

He instead yearned for the joy of the good old days when there was little to worry about, when parents were parents and not kids. When there wasn’t this urgency to find a mate or to go to office to fix things. He just could be.

Being happy had now become painful too. Sometimes he just did not want to get out of bed. At other times it hurt him to be happy. But he never really wanted to be sad.

He therefore started wishing that he just not be there. Not suicidal, just wishing he did not exist. Sort of the way you feel at a funeral when a loved one had died.

As with most things in his life, he had a feeling that if he put his mind to it he could achieve it. After all, he had achieved much. Supreme confidence has always been one of his unique traits, one he was most proud of. So he confidently approached wishing himself into nothingness.

He tried it for several months but each time he ended up with a headache that often made him cranky. And that made him even more miserable.

So he tried a different tact. He attempted being happy. He said yes to his mother’s entreaties and got married. Had kids and lived happily ever after. He became just like the millions around him. And the boy that didn’t want to be there ceased to be there.