Sometimes I think my head is a bee hive,
And the voices of friends, family, strangers are bees,
Constantly buzzing with whispers of:
Where are you going to college?
What do you want to study?
What will you major in?
What are you going to do after college?
What will your future look like?
What are you going to do?
But how can you ask me about tomorrow
When today still feels like yesterday?

It’s like, yesterday I was sitting on your lap in a rocking chair,
Surrounded by the purple carousel ponies on the wallpaper and your soothing voice,
As you pointed out the words:
“Goodnight room, Goodnight moon,”
And today you handed me a stack of books,
Piled to the clouds, holding all the possibilities for my life within the printed pages,
And you told me I “better start reading.”
Yesterday I was splashing in the baby pool,
In my yellow water wings and a Little Mermaid bathing suit,
Today you dropped me in the middle of the ocean,
Without a life vest to hold my head above the surface,
To keep me from drowning in the water as they dunk me under again and again,
Trying to force the answers out of my head,
Where they stay under lock and key,
Where my brain keeps them hidden, even from me.
Yesterday I was forming the shape of a K
With my small, shaky hand and a pink crayon,
Today I have to write my own life story?

The sheet of paper waits before me,
And my hand no longer shakes but the room does
With the rumbling of a thousand voices raised to say a thousand words.
But all I’ve written is two words: my name;
Because I can’t write with these voices in my ear
Shooting words into my brain like bullets from a gun.

Thank you for your concern,
But please, take the needle off the spinning record
Because I hate this song more and more everytime I hear it
And I’m sick of holding a pillow over my ears
And listening to the muffled sound that still finds its way through.
Maybe if I fill my ear canals with cement,
Or pull my eardrums out with fishing hooks on string,
Or crack my skull like an egg and shake it until the auditory cortex falls out-
Maybe then I’ll finally get some peace.

If I had a flux capacitor, I could jump ahead a few months,
To when I actually start living the life you’ve been asking me about for the past four years.
Then I would come back and give you all the right answers.

But that wouldn’t solve anything,
Because the questions won’t end when I go to college.
Then begins the “Have you found a job yet?”
“When will you move out of your parents house?”
“Why aren’t you married yet?”
Who? What? When? Where?
Why do you care?

People will always want to read your story,
To hold in their hands the hard bindings of your heart and flip the pages of your mind.
To sympathize with you as you climb mountains and battle dragons
On your journey to the shimmering palace on the last page.
Why does that bother me so much?

Maybe it’s because I don’t even know what happens next.
I can’t live in tomorrow until I finish living in today.
And you can’t read the next chapter until I am done writing it,
So please stop trying to spoil the ending.