Iambic pentameter is the only thing that actually exists.

I'm going to try and explain this to you, but you might not understand what I'm saying. Bear with me. Here: I'm never going to die. I mean, I'm going to die, but not really. That's not going to really happen. I'm Tuck Everlasting. I'm Addy Everlasting. I'm never going to die.


I mean, I understand the facts. I know I'm going to roll over one day and be twenty years old, and that isn't really that far away. But I'm also going to be 35 and then 40something and then 68 and then I'll be 80 years old one day, eyesight and body completely shot. But... but, in reality, I might never get there -- literally -- but also... Also, the only thing that's real is right this exact second.


I get it. I'll never be as young as I am right this second, and I've never been this old before, but those are just things people say. I'm actually just infinite and unending and I'll always be exactly like I am right now. You'll be exactly like you are right now. Mathematically speaking, we'll all always be a mean age of 17.5. Emotionally, we'll all always be a mean age of 17.5 -- "seventeen years old and invincible" -- and we've been this way since the dawn of time, always have been, always will be, which is bizarre, because we definitely haven't always been this way, and I'm not even as young as I was when I started writing this sentence.


It's just, like, these are the golden-est of the golden years. I've gotten everything I've ever wanted. I've got ten fingers and ten toes and I can run and dance and hear and sing and everything is a thousand miles an hour and all achey and breathless and blissful, and it's really cliche, but, "in that moment, we were infinite," and in these last few months, we have been infinite, just forever suspended in the space between the beginning and the end of time, all infinitely youthful, or something.


I've just never really thought about it. I've always known that I'll grow old, but it hasn't been an actual reality until now. No, that's not true. It's not an actual reality even now. The weirdest part is that some part of me remembers the past, like, life before last August or life before last week, but none of it's really real. Even though Old Life was wonderful and beautiful a lot of the time, but it isn't really real anymore. The only reality is now. 


The only reality is long hair and the way things intertwine and Scout the Dog and Atticus the Cat. Reality and Infinity have nothing to do with the emptiness of February that I filled up with phone calls or bad days when I started high school. Reality, Infinity, it's right now, unending, forever, so fake, so raw, so finite, but not. Not finite one bit.


We're never going to die. This is all we have. Just a oxymoronic, paradoxical, doublethink-y, finite infinity. We're just suspended forever in ever-marching time. Does that make sense?


I almost asked the librarian.
All my love,
Addy