I don’t feel ready to face the world.
Yes, I go to a deemed university, do pretty well for myself in a technical degree most people my age would kill for, have crystal clarity about the shiny professional career I find myself moulding everyday, have comforting, intellectually, emotionally fulfilling and loving relationships with friends and family, seem to be launching myself towards numerous opportunities that propel me faster towards a safer not-so-distant future; but I become just a shell of the girl who keeps waking up everyday, irrespective of the me who doesn’t want to. Who keeps meeting people and making frivolous comedic commentaries, doing all that’s expected (and more, pat on my back) and living her life. With each passing day, I shrivel up more inside this armour of ‘me’ that has been thrown onto this world. And I find it hard to come back up and become ‘her’.
As I fight my predominating urges to not write as I feel or speak to myself, but to cut, dice, dip, deep-fry, soak and carefully embellish my words on a plate before typing them down (lest I do a disservice to my “passion” of writing), I figure out how to not make this seem like a cry for help. Cause oh, help is the last thing I want. I wish for subtle suggestions, an accidental youtube video that magically transforms my life into a first-person open world game I actually have control over, a Ted-X talk that I write in my future autobiography as my ‘it’ moment, my life-changer, my moment of awakening. But I don’t want to talk, to engage, to address the ghosts that slowly eat one bite of my dinner everyday. Miniscule, but still a difference. No one noticed, but something is still missing.
It’s not a massive breakdown (I think I’m over those), it’s a more nuanced dance. The tiny urge to never get out of bed once I’m in it, the trivialisation of studies, socialisation, working towards my dreams (God forbid!), to not care about being myself in public but REALLY caring about who I am in front of people (I know you understand). This urge to snooze people, responsibilities, life.
Am I lazy, am I sick?
“Didn’t text back, such a prick.”
Movies, books, food: see, I stand out!
“You look so weak”- Ma’am, I hardly doubt.
Passing time feels ridiculously slow, yet punishingly fast. Here’s an example:
Imagine yourself to be a woman in your early-twenties, casually reading a magazine about pregnancy and babies and find yourself (surprisingly) gaining a liking to them. For the first time, the idea of a little human whose life I get to shape, seems like a benevolently fun life. You ponder to yourself as you brush over the glossy family magazine with smiling mothers, but none of the dark sides of this childish attraction to child-rearing you’ve just developed. “But oh well, there’s a long time before I walk that road.” And you close the magazine, and conveniently go to sleep.
But no, you wake up, to the conveniently adorned new responsibility of being a mother to a screeching, absolutely ugly baby who seems to have some deep devastation inside of him as a newborn, that he just can’t help splurge out all on you by weeping and creeping. No questions asked, you’ve been handed the baby now. Now yours are the headaches, the post body deformations into a hideous old wrench of the beautiful millenial you used to be, and the agonising frustration of sleepless nights and unending anguishes, anxieties and mental recessions as you numb yourself to the constant crying, yelling and disappointment (both internal and external).
The worry is not just the baby you fancied who suddenly grew into this massive despicable monster you can’t get away from, it’s the gazillion other uncontrollable things that just get rudely accompanied with it that you never asked for. Nothing about this situation is anything you ever asked for.
AND NO THIS IS NOT A NIGHTMARE YOU CAN WAKE UP FROM.
NO THIS DOESN’T STOP ANYTIME SOON EITHER.
This is just your life now. Have fun with it. Touche.
Most days aren’t bad days these days, but more days are. But believe me, I really am happy sometimes. And when I am, everything aforementioned just evaporates into nothingness. I feel grateful, I feel floating, I feel all the joys in the world. But that feeling is fleeting. I mean I agree no happiness here is permanent, we recede into miseries from time to time so we can better enjoy their positive counterparts. But man the transition has never been so frequent ever, and it just feels uncanny. Artificial. Wrong.
I hope it doesn’t get to the point where I question the whole essence of my being (though I would have no way of knowing if it already did). Am I really being completely myself, or am I putting on a show? Though I understand the entire question is redundant, for you can never ‘be’ anyone other than yourself, even if it was a complete imitation. But you get the point. If I’m really chasing a life I want, shouldn’t the process be effortless? Must I not be at peace (‘happy’ is just a lotttttt to ask for these days) if I’m pursuing the ‘journey’ I like, and not the end goal? I also understand passion isn’t always the motivation for you to get where you wanna be, sometimes you just gotta get up your ass and get some work done. But come on man, a helpless slump for the past 40 days is pulling me back into some past depressive periods I’d rather forget than relive, or be reminded of.
Its like I fail to process how my days go everyday. I’m the NPC in my own life. Like I’ve been hurled into things irrespective of whether I want to be in them or not, and then picked up from them and hurled into other unwanted things.
And maybe this is the state of life for everyone. Or worse for some. Or magnificently better for some in which case, fuck you. No happiness for you, only pettiness I embody.
Though on a serious note maybe this is adulthood and I should just embrace it without cribbing. Or maybe I should finally become the stoic I secretly want to be and wake up at 5 am, rarely smile or have friends to talk to and bathe in cold water and silent regret everyday. Or maybe this stuff will sort itself out as life goes, all I have to do is have time to think about me, and think about the time I have.
At the end, does it even really matter?
