How did I get this old this fast?

This morning as I was walking to class I suddenly felt very un-young and I had this rush of empathy for with people who experience mid-life crises.

I'm in this strange, dynamic, challenging holding pattern right now that sometimes leaves me feeling antsy. Why can't this part be over? Why can't I be in med school? Why can't I be married? Why can't I have tropical holidays and a house with a garage? Why do I have to be this poofy-haired, 28 year-old, soft-bellied general chem student with a sunburn? Why didn't I start all of this sooner instead of wasting so many months in jobs I knew were wrong for me?

Life is long, I guess. And this is just how long it took for me to be ready to handle something like this (school, I mean). There's nothing much I can do about the timetable. I'll be a doctor by 2011. In the meantime, I can at least get a haircut and go to the gym.

I think this was all triggered by a documentary Drew and I watched last night about middle-schoolers. Middle school was so awful... getting dumped by my best friend, my parents divorcing, my grades taking a nosedive, my faggy side intensifying....

At one point in the documentary this little boy was crying because no one would sit with him at lunch and Drew said "We didn't sit at tables. My friends and I would just take our lunch outside and sit under a tree." That seems too perfect. While I was lonely and miserable in freezing-cold Missouri, he was splayed out under a sunny warm California sky. At least that's how I'm picturing him.

That's life, I guess. There's no changing it, no do-overs... it just keeps coming (and it seems to be coming faster and faster every year).