What Terrible Time to the Young Preferring Thanatos than Eros

In the cathedral of screens, where light bleeds blue
into the tender corners of seventeen-year-old eyes,
they gather like moths to the flame of their own undoing,
these children who have learned the weight of emptiness
before they've known the gravity of love.

What terrible time is this—
when the pulse beneath their wrists
speaks louder than the pulse
of another's heart against their chest,
when they measure their worth
in the currency of absence,
in the digital mathematics of isolation?

I watch them walk through hallways
like ghosts rehearsing their own haunting,
their shoulders curved inward,
protecting some secret wound
that blooms in the space between
what they are and what they believe
they should be.

The death drive whispers sweetly
in languages they learned too young:
You are not enough.
You will never be enough.
Why not rest? Why not sleep?
Why carry this weight
when you could simply
set it down?

But Eros—wild, messy, life-affirming Eros—
where has he gone?
Where is the force that once pulled
teenagers toward each other
in parking lots and at kitchen tables,
fumbling with the beautiful awkwardness
of becoming human together?

Now they swipe left on intimacy,
scroll past connection,
double-tap their way through
the performance of living
while their souls grow thin
as the screens that hold them.

What terrible time is this
when a generation raised on superhero movies
cannot find the hero in themselves,
when they've been fed a steady diet
of apocalypse and ending
until they've forgotten
that stories also begin?

In the suburbs of despair,
where lawns are perfect
and dinner tables silent,
where parents work late
to afford the therapy
their children won't attend,
the young ones practice dying
in small ways:

They cut their hair
like scissors through hope.
They wear black
like mourning clothes
for their own unlived lives.
They speak in memes
because authentic language
feels too dangerous,
too revealing.

What terrible time is this
when mental health
becomes a trending topic
but not a lived experience,
when they know the vocabulary
of depression and anxiety
but have forgotten the words
for joy, for wonder,
for the simple pleasure
of being alive on a Tuesday?

I think of Thanatos—
not the dramatic god of death
but the quiet whisper
that says enough
when everything feels
like too much.

The death drive doesn't always wear
the mask of suicide;
sometimes it looks like
scrolling until dawn,
numbing until nothing,
choosing the familiar ache
of disconnection
over the terrifying vulnerability
of reaching toward another.

They prefer the certainty
of their own ending
to the uncertainty
of their own beginning.

But what if we told them
that Eros is not just
the god of romantic love
but the force that says
yes to life itself,
yes to the mess
and the confusion
and the beautiful catastrophe
of growing up?

What if we reminded them
that every generation
has felt like the last,
has stared into the abyss
of their own making
and wondered if tomorrow
was worth the trouble?

What terrible time is this—
but also, what ordinary time,
what human time,
what time like all the others
when the young must choose
between the seductive simplicity
of not-being
and the complex, demanding,
glorious work
of becoming?

In coffee shops at 2 AM,
I watch them huddle over laptops,
typing their way toward
some version of themselves
they might be able to love.

In therapy offices,
they learn to name their pain
like cataloging butterflies—
anxiety, depression, trauma—
beautiful specimens
pinned to the board
of their own understanding.

On social media,
they perform their healing
like a dance they've seen
but never learned,
hoping that if they move
through the motions long enough,
they might find the music.

What terrible time is this
when they must become
their own parents,
their own heroes,
their own gods
before they've even learned
to be human?

And yet—
and yet I see them
in moments of forgetting,
when they laugh until they snort,
when they cry at movies
about dogs and friendship,
when they fall in love
with books and songs
and the way light falls
through their bedroom windows
at golden hour.

I see them creating art
from their wounds,
writing poetry
on their phones,
making music
in their bedrooms,
finding each other
in the comments sections
of their own loneliness.

What terrible time is this—
and what magnificent time,
when they refuse
to be saved by anyone else,
when they insist
on saving themselves,
when they choose
the harder path
of staying alive
not because it's easy
but because it's theirs?

So here is what I want to tell them,
these young ones
who balance on the edge
between Thanatos and Eros,
between ending and beginning:

Your pain is real
but it is not final.
Your story is just starting
even when it feels
like it's ending.
You are not too much
or too little—
you are exactly
what the world needs
even when you cannot
see it yourself.

The terrible time
is also the only time
we have,
and you—
you beautiful, broken,
becoming things—
you are the reason
it's worth staying.

Choose Eros.
Choose the messy,
complicated,
heartbreaking,
soul-expanding
work of being alive.

Choose love—
not the easy kind
but the kind that chooses
you back,
that says yes
to your becoming,
that sees your scars
as proof of your courage
to keep going.

What terrible time is this?
What beautiful time is this?
What time is this
but yours?

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