nothing else but my heart's desire [COLLECTION] | FINISHED

Adulthood as a marker of success - ORIGINAL PROSE

Adulthood feels like freedom to me, it's real life but it is a blessing to adhere to no one's rules other than my own, no one's moral code other than my own, no one's responsibilities other than my own. I am my own person, I am my own woman, but I feel the weight of the past anchoring me to my sadness, forcing me beneath the waves, as I sink further and further to my demise. I see many paths before me, I see the expectations of life placed upon me, a weight on my chest as though the very hand of God keeps me down, presses me to my bed as I waste my days in my depression and misery. It seems impossible to escape, as though my life will play out just as it had for my mother, my mother's mother and so on, for every woman since the beginning of time. But I am me, I am myself, and I will always take each step as I have always done so: stumbling through, yet on my feet always, until I take my last, never a scar upon my back, facing the mighty enemy of womanhood, of life, of death, as a mystery figure, until unmasked to reveal it was me all along, a figure so like myself yet unlike me in every way I can visualise. Adulthood is my own, as it is yours, as it is theirs, as it is every person to live and breathe since we first thought, said and recorded the words of our own realisation, our own horror, our own clumsy march towards ourselves and our own inevitable demise: What if? What then? Why not? What if we live? What if we die? What then? What happens then? Why not try regardless of the truth? Why do I write these words? Why bother? And once again, why not? It is why I write now, why I recorded my thoughts for all to see, for our desire for connection always, since the dawn of time, since the first woman questioned her life as a mother and as herself, since the first man asked what it all meant as he looked to the stars and wondered at the marvel of nature, seems to far out-weigh to dreadful, visceral horror of being known. Adulthood is mine, as is this life, I will make it my own.