The blessing of youth is the vibrant openness to life,
Fearlessly exploring the unkown,
the sheer possibilities- of everything.
As a troubled young girl with silent issues of identity and accecptance,
all I ever wanted to do, as far as I can remember,
is get away from my hometown-
far far away from the suffocating, beauteous mountains,
away from the stuck-up crowd who knew everything about everyone.
School (and all the things in between) was a task to be completed in order to get to the faraway city, where I would thrive.
I could not wait for it get over, once and for all.
When the day finally came and I packed my suitcase for good, one way ticket in my glitter tote bag,
I was not warned that as a girl, my life would be marked by packing and unpacking that same suitcase.
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This city is intoxicating.
Treading into the unkown with fluttering lashes and shimmer mists,
Doing all the things I had never imagined I could.
Some of the anonymity: no one to answer to, no consequences whatsoever.
Some futile little glories like winning the fastest beer drinking challenge.
Claiming the nights because the stars were all mine.
I was flippant about life and living,
but being alive was the vibe to kill for.
Irrelevant things like judgements and outcomes did not matter
And boys were just playthings who would never get to tell me what to do.
I was living life.
The pollution was fresh air to my nicotine loving lungs,
the fast traffic: music to my ears.
Nothing in this city scared me.
I knew it was all worth it.
All the mean girls from school who did me dirty would never get to experience this and that alone was soothing to my soul.
All those narrow humans back in the small town would never get such taste of life's ecstasy and that spite alone made me high.
The thing about getting high, so high on life,
is that it takes a long time to fall
but once you fall down,
it is a terrible low.
Soul crashing, bones breaking.
Such a low with a terrible pull that you would not conisder twice about going six feet under,
because I did not.
I would have happily taken my life with my favourite lipstick on;
even prepared my tombstone carving-
"You will never be this young again".
As an individualist,
I do not necessarily propogate questioning the choices one makes in life and I most certainly do not belive in regrets.
Regrets are for those sorry humans with life half lived and unreleased inhibitions.
Regrets aren't for those who've kissed whoever they wanted to and left the party whenever they wished to.
I do, however, take a firm stand on believing that every choice in life,
big or small, makes us who we are,
It is what makes our story whole.
I read once that
Just because you can avoid the devil does not mean you should hang out near the gates of hell
Because you wouldn't know when you enter, albeit accidentally.
A few hours of sobriety has made me rethink about the human bonds I've tied for life,
some camaraderie are irreversible-
Relationships colliding like planets in a system of dying suns.
I have always prided myself in my knowledge of the arts-
read dostoyevsky as though it was my religion,
listened to music extensively with no genre prejudice,
abstract painted as a hobby,
a knack for good cinema and food.
But the world of academia embeds in us the undertanding that the more we know, the less we know.
Some might, therefore, consider how ignorance, in fact, is bliss.
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The curse of youth is, it fades with time.
like the physicality of human beauty- it is limited.
As the days go by, the optimism completely mellows down,
even nihilism doesn't sustain anymore.
We get faced with our mirror image screaming the dreaded word- responsibility.
Realisation dawns about how we must make some meaning of this fleeting existence.
Living solely on spontaneous fun is not a really narratable legacy- it is no legacy at all.
Because humans, we decompose, we skeletonise.
And the few people who cross our lives are not enough to preserve this library of our existence and all the stories of our being.
Therefore, we give in.
We succumb to the way of the mortal world,
This pull is as strong as chasing that first high-
to be remembered,
to belong,
to leave a mark,
and to live big so that we can gift this bequest back to our humble roots.
So life happens.
Living wasn't always about running wild, sippin' on cosmos and getting enamoured by the city lights with lusty lover-boys admiring us.
To thrive is to open the big door of life and welcome the realisation that we do need help.
Survival knocks on the door when-
that one friend gets discovered unconscious and visits rehab like a vacation spot,
we start becoming that one adolescent ex we loathed,
we start looking for reflections of our incomprehensible parents in every romantic interest,
we fuck things up just because good things are way too heavy,
we remember we asked for love and not ruin,
When the same harrowing "what next?" questions follow us everywhere.
We finally get up and take our everything-shower and start working on our resumes.
Faking a smile as we decay slowly,
we visit our own graves from time to time,
perhaps recite some anecdotes of youth,
reminisce in journals,
post some throwback pictures on social media,
musing about what life felt like,
while being what we have now become,
Fondly preserving the relics of what we were.
