Behind the scenes

As in the legendary bird. You’ll get it by the end of this post.

Wow, it’s been a long while… and gosh was I one emo kid. Hahah.

2013 is almost coming to an end, and I felt a need to recap my life somehow. So here I am, and hereafter, a letter of things I’d like to say to my 21-year-old self:

Hey kiddo,

I wish I could tell you our life-long dream has been realised – it hasn’t, and quite likely never will be. On the flip-side, we survived the 10-year hegemonic beating, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s a lifetime’s supply of hegemonic beating crammed into 10 relentless years. We did it buddy, we made it.

As of right now, I feel free, and my state of mind regenerated from a state of almost hopelessness. So, what changed? What finally ended said hegemonic beating?

I pulled my head out of my ass.

Pulled myself together. Grew a little more self-loving and self-appreciating, embraced our long-oppressed inner Aries. Somehow the universe caught on and developed all sorts of respect for the lessons I’ve learned, and of course, for surviving those relentless years of rejection, loneliness, and depression while the earth spun, sun shone, and bees buzzed.

Don’t get me wrong – life’s still not easy, still not fair. But boy, you grew to be a daring, courageous one. Though not as courageous as James Gatz… you don’t know him yet, but he is the only character who shares our desperation – where we couldn’t seem to shake off an unending series of unfortunate events and circumstances. He, however, had the gumption to piece together a new persona to escape his circumstances and eventually became Jay Gatsby. The difference is, he died before he could enjoy the life he tirelessly built. (sorrynotsorry for the spoiler)

Although our life-long dream is now put on an indefinite hiatus, I’m still happy to report things are going great. More importantly, they’re about to get a lot better, come hell or high water. Just like a Phoenix, you’ll rise from the ashes(of a certain variety…) with a lot more drive, inspiration, and goals that used to scare us, but not any more. You thought you’d made the world your oyster then – it was our ashtray.

Now the world’s our oyster. If you could imagine how thrilled I am when I say that, you’d find yourself accompanied by that same undefeatable mood.

Ahh, feels good. Off to bed now.

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life’s mystery seems so faded

I have. One too many times. It’s like accidentally falling into a trance and later when you come to, everything’s a blur… like you’re unsure if you did what you dreamt or dreamt what you did. Scary as hell.

I need to get a grip on reality. Stat.

Crawl into my bed
Hop into my shower
Run into my arms

The way the world works is funny.

When you care, they don’t give a damn
and when you don’t give a damn, they care.

It’s nicer to be on the care-free end of things. You won’t get hurt and you’ll know that people care about you despite being seemingly heartless.

Haven’t you heard? Good guys finish last.

So I have this need to rant, and knowing noone would give a damn about the stuff I’m gonna say in a minute, here I am.

I’ve been thinking about, erm, my life’s progress so far, all 22 years of it spent existing… and aging… but not exactly living. I feel I’ve just been wasting all these years, precious years, not doing… well, what I want to be doing really. The pinch became a punch when I realized college is supposed to be the best years of our lives, at least that’s what they say in those American movies, and I can see why – Everyone’s away from home and still young, but of age, and open to experiment all things legal (or illegal). It’s possibly the last few years to live off of parents financially before heading into the working world. And most importantly, in college you have the time (and youth) to do the aforementioned 2 things, and if anything, it’s less daunting to face a college staff as opposed to the boss. But I digressed.

Basically, I feel my whole life has been about pretending and lying and MORE pretending and lying. Quite the feat. If I had more skillz, I could be like Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can. But no, all this pretending and lying has greatly cramped my style, if I may say so. I’m stuck in a rut. I want to get out of it. I want to change. Can you imagine giving your life a complete makeover, after living the same ol’ way your whole life?

I can’t.

My life’s been set by expectations and conditioning, and those 2 fucking things will continue to lay out the path for my life to follow, as it has since the minute I was born. So that’s really where the problem is… that I’ve wasted 22 years and realizing it and then realizing I can’t do squat about it. Changing now, or any time in the future, will make me happier but at the same time, will most definitely hurt the ones I truly care about. Sigh… good things in life are never free, and the things you want most are the hardest to get.

Just a stranger behind an overused mask. May you be more cheerful than I am this festive season.