Where is Halloween?

Ok, I lied. I'm not happy. I'm not sitting on my sofa, eating chocolate, in my costume, forgetting all of my troubles. In fact, I'm in my room, fragments of Smartie shells filling the nooks and crannies of my teeth, tears streaming down my face, because I've realized a very simple, very obvious, fact of life; You can't escape your troubles, you can't hide away from essays, from unemployment, from education, from all of those big, shitty things that make up adulthood. Halloween is dead, my friends. It died with our childhoods, with our sense of wonderment, with our innocence   because you see, we're all growing up. We're all learning that life is just a colossal flood of work and responsibility, that we just can't run away from anymore. We can't just put on a mask, and escape the consequences of our actions anymore, because we're all supposed to be adults now. We don't have time for fun, frights, or frivolities. All we have time for is function, and I can't stand for that.

I know that right now, I should be doing homework, trying to write my first paragraph for Lit Studies, or maybe my as-of-now-late review for Drama. I should get started on my essay for English, as well as my three plot summaries for that very same subject. I should be doing my Physics homework, or my Media Studies homework, or studying for the DECA test tomorrow. I should be searching for a university, or a job. I should be reading Bloom and Campbell, Eco and Frye. I should be writing a short story, a novella, a book. I should, I should, I should, but I can't. I can't, because I am sitting in my room, out of my costume, out of my mind, writing to the invisible Internet people, in order to stave off a bout with a depression I didn't even know I had. So, this is what it feels like to be too sad to be productive.

Everything is just piling up, now. "Oh, Kyle," I'm sure they'll say, "You're just being a pessimist. You can still complete your work, all you need to do is set goals, mark specific time periods during which you will do your homework, and have a schedule." These people do not know me, they do not know what it is like to be me, to have a brain that refuses to cooperate with the rest of you. They do not understand what it means to procrastinate to the point where nothing ever gets done. Ever.

Or, maybe they do. Maybe, I'm lying to myself. Maybe, I can get out of this hole. Maybe I can still fix everything. Maybe, instead of complaining about the lack of time, I simply need to make some goddamn time. After all, when you live on a dead end street, you get a lot of free time.