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I’m jealous of the way Poppy still thinks that everything she’s ever experienced is special.
“I get really bad strep every sixteen months like clockwork. What makes you get strep every sixteen months?” “Being alive,” Poppy says. “Getting strep is part of being alive.”
As I fall asleep, I’m jealous that Poppy can articulate such a clear, raw vision of want, that she can fantasize so deeply. Every time I think of something I want I manage to talk myself out of it. I close my eyes and tell myself to think hard about my deepest wish for my future life. I tell myself it’s okay to imagine; that I’m safe inside my own head; that I can get specific; that my desires are worth considering.
I have an education, I’m not riddled with the Black Death, there’s clean water, there’s plumbing, there’s supermarkets, there’s a map in my phone, it even rotates—and I’m just fucking nowhere, I’m making nothing of anything. And it’s like: our great-grandparents fled Europe for what? So one day we could buy thirty-dollar tubes of organic aluminum-free deodorant and sit on our asses making content? Looking at this fucking flat-screen all day? Doing nothing?”