I have a need, an emptiness. Sunlight cannot reach it to warm it. Kind words are muffled, twisted by it. Caring friends, always on short order, are driven further away by its sickening stench.

The black, ugly maw of my 25th birthday looms before me. I know. I feel it. I hear it grinding its stubby yellow teeth in my ear late at night. I see it reflected in my exhausted, jaded eyes. I am toe-to-toe with my own worst enemy: My dying youth. And no-one understands.

Sometimes, even I don't understand.

Like me, sternly warning the teenagers to relish their youth in an entry a few weeks back, my older cohorts ruffle my hair, pat me on the head. They insist, "You aren't getting 'old,' silly child. You have a life's worth of time ahead of you still."

Even you, dear reader, what you must be thinking of me! "She's either: A. Completely bonkers; B. A tad too melodramatic and narcissistic for her own good; C. Quietly counting her regrets and sorrows as she watches the rest of the world continue on without her; or D. All of the Above."

D. All of the Above.

D. and I became fast friends early on. D. was my saviour during those horrid, fill-in-the-bubble-with-a-#2-pencil placement tests and Psychological profiles. D., my trump card and my last resort. D. will be the death of me.

You see, in life, you have to have something special, some perfect agenda, lesson, goal. Somewhere to go. Something to explore. Someone to be consistently, unfailingly, reliably you. When you don't, when you realise that life is All of the Above and Nothing in Particular, you've reached the final mile. Everything is grey. No new adventure. No new lesson. No fanciful proselytisations on the effects of Cheez-Whiz on our society. No more dreams. Everything, anything, no one thing, it doesn't matter which. D. All of the Above.

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