Life has been hard and complicated and straightforward and always flowing for me (and I imagine everyone) lately. I think a lot about high school and try to remember how things were for me then. How  much easier it was not worrying about what people in general thought, how much harder it was thinking about how one person at a time thought. I didn't think about friendships then, probably at my friends' expense. I hated the one-thing-leading-to-anotherness of my life, I hated doing what I was supposed and expected to, which to no one's surprise I wish I had a little more of these days. Being cared for is of course primarily a material experience, but being cared for in terms of expectations is significant. What gets mentioned about adulthood is having to be responsible for yourself and others, not having someone else to pay your rent, buy your food, solve your problems. From my standpoint of extremely limited experience, the bigger difference from adolescence is the infinite not-knowing... or rather the only knowledge being that it is not infinite, that your decision-making time will run out and you'd better get it right because we only get one chance at this. It was easier (and easier to resent the outside forces, which was nice in its own way) knowing when to get up in the morning, knowing where you were going and what you were going to do, who you were going to see and what you were going to talk about. When I say you I mean me, but I think it applies to all of us. Give me an interminable high school class during which at least I could feel like I had some kind of agency, by the unquestionable evidence of its being repressed, over yet another afternoon of interminable self-questioning, waffling, waiting and trickling away of hope that I'll achieve anything.