Fuck Life

I was fourteen when I first heard someone say it with full chest: “Man, f*ck life.” It wasn’t in a song or a movie. It was Marcus, my older cousin, sitting on the hood of his car, staring at the night like it had betrayed him. The words came out flat. Not angry. Not loud. Just... finished.

I didn’t understand then. I do now.

There’s a quiet kind of breaking that happens long after the world expects you to be okay. It's not the dramatic kind you post about. It's not even the kind that makes you cry. It's just a silent disconnect. One day, you realize you're brushing your teeth with the same energy as walking into a funeral—numb, obligatory, hollow.

My version started in 2020. Like most people, I lost things. But while some people lost jobs or routines or social lives, I lost someone. Not to COVID. Just to life.

His name was Jordan. My brother in every way except blood. We grew up together. Shared bikes, secrets, even heartbreak. He was the kind of guy who remembered your favorite cereal and made you laugh when your world was crumbling. And then one day, he was just... gone.

No goodbye. No warning. Just a text that said, “I’m tired, man. I love you. Don’t come looking.”

We did look. Cops. Friends. Facebook groups. Three months later, his body turned up in an abandoned rail yard, cold and forgotten.

After that, everything went grayscale.

I went back to work. I smiled at the appropriate times. I answered the “How are you?” questions with the expected “I’m good, you?” But every night, I stared at the ceiling and asked a question I couldn’t say out loud: “What’s the point?”

There’s this weird pressure to be okay. Society doesn’t like prolonged grief. You get maybe a month of sympathy. After that, you’re just making people uncomfortable. And God forbid you say something honest like, “I don’t want to be here anymore.” People look at you like you just confessed to a crime.

So, I didn’t say anything. I just existed.

But something changed in April of this year. I was riding the subway—same route, same numb expression—when this old woman got on and sat across from me. She looked like she had lived three lives already. And she stared. Not in a creepy way. More like she saw something in me.

After a few stops, she leaned in and said, “You’re walking like a man who’s already gone.”

I blinked.

She didn’t explain. Just gave me a folded piece of paper, got off at the next stop, and vanished into the crowd.

The paper said:

"You’re still here. That’s enough for today."

That was it.

Simple. Maybe even cliché. But I cried for the first time in two years.

It didn’t fix everything. This isn’t one of those stories. But it cracked something open.

I started therapy a week later. I told my therapist about Jordan. About the hole he left. About how I sometimes felt guilty for waking up. And instead of telling me to “stay positive” or “practice gratitude,” she said something else.

She said, “Of course you feel that way. You loved deeply. That kind of loss doesn’t just fade—it reshapes you.”

I wish someone had told me that earlier.

I started writing letters to Jordan—just pouring out all the things I never got to say. I started going on walks without my headphones, just listening to the world again. And I started checking in on the strong friends—the ones who always say “I’m good” but whose eyes don’t match their words.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

Sometimes saying “f*ck life” isn’t about giving up. It’s about naming the pain. It’s about finally being honest. And if you’re lucky—or stubborn—you might find that somewhere beyond that raw, ugly honesty is something worth staying for.

Not hope, necessarily. But maybe a beginning.

I still have days where I stare at the ceiling and ask that quiet question. But I also have days where I laugh without guilt. Where I look at a sunset and think, “Jordan would’ve liked this.”

That’s enough for today.