Dear Lana,

Today, I unsubscribed from the Daily Pennsylvanian’s daily update. It is an action that signifies that I no longer care about what going on in my alma mater. I’ve started to read about it less and less lately. That is a past life, and only the future awaits those who are stuck in the past.

Lana, I’ve been brushing my teeth so hard these days that I’ve been consistently drawing blood. Before, I would only draw blood from my mouth if I flossed extra hard. Now, I draw blood whenever I would brush my teeth, morning and night.

I wonder why I’ve been drawing blood from my toothbrush, Lana. I’m not brushing particularly hard. It’s not as if I accidentally swallowed some formaldehyde while dissecting a frog in my 7th grade life science classroom. I don’t need to brush that hard. I just want to brush my teeth because that seems to be what adults do these days: brushing their teeth.

Lana, I don’t particularly feel like an adult. What are adults? They are just people who do adult things, like brushing their teeth. Don’t get me wrong; I have been brushing my teeth all of my life, but now I am actively looking forward to brushing my teeth every night. That seems to be something that adults do, right?

I think back to how Tolstoy kept on yearning for his youth, but I find that idea to be very unrelatable. I don’t think there was ever a phase in my life where I didn’t want to move on to the next phase in my life. When I was a child, I wanted to be an adult. When I was an adolescent, I wanted to be an adult. Now, I am technically an adult, but I don’t feel like an adult. I want to feel like an adult, Lana. That’s all I wanted all of my life.