I am 28. I am no longer ubermensch

A birthday rant. Warning: Contains strong language. Strong like dog poo in the morning breeze. And ridiculous amounts of cheese. And darkness, like three sheets of black paint scrapped off cars and stapled together. Be warned.

I am 28. A nothing year. An in-between sum. Inconsequential. Except that it isn’t. 28 for me is utterly significant, but for all the wrong reasons.

When I was 17, I became somewhat nihilistic, and existentialist. There was no point to anything, was there?

By the time I was 21, I had sort of figured out that nihilism was ridiculous. You had to make your own way, find a vocation. Mr. Heidegger helped: it’s so convenient finding an ideology of sorts that fits your wherewithal.  All I had to do was find my vocation. Rationality trumped all.

At the same time, it was complete rebellion against the patriarchy I saw all around me. Rebellion against big pricks with little dicks. Rebellion against unreason, and unjustified male pride. Rebellion against little magazines telling women how to get men. Rebellion against little magazines telling men how to get laid. Rebellion against putrid little girls trying to like the bad boys. Rebellion against entitlement.  For what right did hairy objects between your legs, both you genders, give you to commandeer the other side?

Rebellions against the male idiots around me. Who had fantasies of whores. And pure virgins. To fuck and to marry, respectively. Idiots. Who postured. Who tried being macho. More macho then they were, than they could be, than anyone could be. Forget crimes against womankind; Their ideas were crimes against mankind. To think my gender could be represented by them, those men castrated by circumstance and where they grew up, trying to prove otherwise. And I hate them. And I’m becoming one of them.

Rebellion too against the female idiots around me. Who had fantasies of Adonis. And Gandhi. To fuck and to marry, respectively. Idiots. Who postured. Who tried being feminine, and wily. More wily then they were, than they could be, than anyone could be. Forget crimes against mankind; their ideas were crimes against womankind. To think your gender could be represented by them, those women whored out  by circumstance and where they grew up. And I hate them. And you might just be becoming one of them.

I was 25. I was ubermensh. I stood against the idiocy of the man and his testosterone, of the woman and her idiotic attempts to barter her vagina. I stood against games, against artifice. I stood against irrationality, I thought. People had come, and they had hurt, and they had gone. I, in return, had hurt them. Not because i could, but because it happened. It was mutual, and therefore respectful. All was in balance, in remarkable equilibrium; I was 25.

I am 28. And it’s all gone to delightful hell. I am no longer ubermensch. I clench my jaws shut tightly when I sleep, I’ve recently realized, and awake with a dull ache in my neck because my molars have been dancing the fandango all night. It’s never happened before. The fact it’s happening incessantly now worries me, but also pleases me.

I am 28. Gone is my protection against lack of reason. And I have been assailed by very weird constructs. Of jealousy. Insecurity. Loneliness. Ridiculousness. Of trying to figure out what people can mean. Why they mean. Who they are, and why they have the power to affect me – something they would not have had had I been 25. And my companions of old have found better things to do. Or was it I who’d abandoned them? Can’t quite tell anymore, I’m afraid. But they’re perfect little human shaped vestiges of foggy memory now.

Gone too is the rebellion against emotion. And the idea that surely the world’s problems could be solved with a little bit of dispassion. Years of bad news barraged at me have turned me most disfavourable towards a particular little apartheid regime. I want to be impartial, but partiality knocks the door down. But I still think rationally can sort the world out-if only barbiturates could take away the anger and the sadness. Occasionally, self-medication is essential for rational thought.

And I fear. Me. You. All of us. Why we can be idiots. Why we’re not more idiotic than we are. I have felt no real loss, yet I hurt. I can rationalize the old man of the river away from his water, yet I am prone to flights of fancy, both constructive and destructive. Insane ideas flit outside the windows of my reason, titillating.

I know where i need to be, and I even know how to get there. That’s a plus. You see, I’m not a lost 25 year old anymore. And physically, I’m doing very well. It’s true I can’t stomach as many late nights as before. But in the stakes of brute strength and presence, I’ve never been better. The inevitable decline is still a few years away.

But the mind is a different story. It has seen more, and can argue better.  But the iron discipline of years prior is eroding. I whine. How dare I give myself the liberty? I sleep in. I get distracted. #Socmed has taught me to skim, never engage. To follow blindly where the 140 characters lie. And to top it all, I allow myself the utter luxuries of feeling loss, jealousy, anger, knowing full well madness lurks down those paths.

Bottom line. I am 28. Bloody brilliant place to be. I am glad I’m not 27 anymore. But sometimes, I wish for the caustic invulnerability of 25. We all age, but I can’t quite figure out if I’m aging for the better. But all this is empty, ridiculous talk.

There’s so much to do.  And so many people who’re trying to make a difference. And so many people who, in their carelessness, are trying to undo that work. I need to pick a side. I am both sides.