Harbingers of the Death of My Childhood

One of the Coffee House paintings, artist unknown.

At twenty-three years old, I have been waiting for this day for a long time: the coming of my adulthood revelation. Indeed, the Four Horsemen of Childhood Apocalypse have finally knocked on my door, bringing me into what I feel is the culmination of a gradual foray into adulthood. The actual symbology of the Four Horsemen of the original apocalyptic meaning is hazy at best, with various religious and secular interpretations based on the Bible verses in Revelation 6, but the symbology of my four harbingers seems to me to be clear as day.

The White Horse, or Throwing Up at 3am Without Waking Mom Up:

The rider of the White Horse in the Apocalypse can be interpreted as illness, plague, or pestilence (it can also be interpreted as Christ, OR the Antichrist…see…ambiguous at best). When I first moved out, a mere ten minutes away from my parents, I envisioned that not much would change. I lived in my parents home until the ripe old age of twenty-one, and up until that point, I was still painfully sharing every detail of various illnesses with my mother: which ends it was coming out of, what the consistency of my vomit was like, if my mucus was bright green or clear. Things only a mother would unflinchingly ask. The time I got food poisoning (also the day I picked out a wedding outfit that I would never end up needing), I think she slept in my room during the…