It is currently 2 p.m. on a casual Tuesday afternoon, smack dab in the first week of August 2021. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to write about but I knew I just needed this. I needed the seamless flow of words dripping from my fingertips. My mind is a flood of incoherent thoughts that are screaming to be heard. My heart feels like a graveyard with grief that demands to be felt.
I find myself constantly questioning the same thing over and over.
‘What am I mourning?’ ‘Where is this unfiltered sense of loss coming from?’
‘What part of me died, and left a hole that painfully asks to be filled?’
I keep thinking about my birthday.
In a few months, I’ll officially be thrown into my last moments as a teenager. One step closer to the impending responsibilities that come with adulthood. One last year to be able to make mistakes and still being able to hide from the ultimate consequences.
I should be taking risks.
I should be reckless.
I should be spending every waking moment so in love with life while I am still in the position to do so.
Instead, here I am, cocooned in a type of numbness that binds me to the ground. I cant wake up. I cant get up. Im stuck in this vast sea and I am drowning.
I know I should be asking for help.
How?
How do you break the surface when you cant even begin to describe the things gripping you?
How do you reach a hand out to your allies when you don’t even understand how you ended up here in the first place?
I’ll be close to 20 soon.
20 years on this earth.
I do not want to look back one day, resentment woven through the intricate designs of my being, and feel empty.
I want to only breathe in the greatness of my youth.
I want to be able to tell my children, that I regretted nothing. Not the skinned knees, not the fall outs, not even the pain-stricken days where I felt like I could disintegrate and flow with the wind.
But ultimately, with every bone in my body, with every single essence in my bones,
I don’t want to leave.
I want to stay here, where tiny-winged creatures come out at dusk and put flowers in my hair.
I want to stay here, picking up the stardust, while the wind’s melodic breeze sweeps me off my feet.
Here, where I see the smiling wild-haired girl in every nook and crevice. She is brimming with hope. I could see it in her eyes. It was as if pure unbridled sunshine was seeping out of her pores. But there was something familiar in the way her lips curled upwards, almost as if I was looking at a blury reflection of myself in the pond.
She holds out her arm and her touch alone fills me with courage.
I want to stay here with her.
I want to stay in the last place on earth that does not feel alien to me.
This I know.
But time is not a patient man. When the time comes, he’ll put on his long coat and gently pull me away. He’ll escort me out of this place I call home and lock the doors, leaving me only glimpses of all the memories I kept there. He wont let me stop. It isn’t in his nature to be kind and forgiving. He is harsh. He is real.
Gone will be the sense of euphoria that came with being blinded to the crumbling of society’s morale. No longer will there be that sheet of obliviousness that separated my views of the world and the reality of it all.
And who will I be then?
What am I without my rose-coloured glasses?
There are too many uncertainties that make my skin crawl. At times, something inside me is being threatened by the feeling that my safe haven will be pulled out from under me at any time.
I feel so lost yet I am where I have always been.
Nothing has changed yet everything feels different.
I feel like I am trapped in an hourglass and im running out of seconds.
But what is there left to do?
What is it that feels so unfinished that I cant shake away this anxiety.
I need answers. These unanswered questions are slowly becoming parasites leeching of the little good left. My head is pounding and my heart is aching. Even in the face of limitless joy, the darkness starts to poison whatever calm I have left. And I didn’t even have much to begin with.
It truly feels like things are coming to an end.
But as Time drags me away, he opens up the doors to a whole new house. An empty cavern for stocking up new core memories.
So why do I feel this way?
Why am I not rejoicing at the fact that I still have a whole new world to explore in front of me?
I thought this was a distress signal, calling out for desperate help. But as the words leave my body and declutter my maze of thoughts, I don’t feel the need for assistance. Yes, I am almost literally drowning in unfathomable sorrow, but I do not feel the need to be saved.
And so I have come to the conclusion that all this misery is actually a disguised tribute to the girl I am slowly outgrowing. These words filled with hesitation and uncertainty is my own artistic form of a goodbye.
Because despite the pain I feel about the impatient flow of time, I will not let it murder the sacredness of the little girl who believed in the balance of good and bad.
She walked with a confidence that she could make a change, albeit a miniscule one. She danced her heart out in the rain and she basked beneath the stars. She wasn’t afraid to grow, she welcomed it. She believed she would be a woman her parents were proud of. She believed that she would age into kindness, a shelter for those who need to be sheltered.
She believed.
The person I am today, is so many things less than what that little girl expected.
But knowing her, she would still be in awe of the things I manage to achieve rather than contemplate the failures.
That little girl simply planted the seeds and kept us rooted and grounded, giving me room to bloom wherever I dreamed of. And maybe it was her voice all along inside me, whispering and pleading that I had no obligation to be a perfect blossom. She just needed me to grow.
A euology is not simply meant for the dead.
It is for the people left behind.
It is a statement of freedom from a heavy past.
It is a remembrance of the good, outweighed by the bad.
So this, is for all the times the little soul in me chose joy over success.
This, in all its pure imperfections, is for me.
When Time comes to drag me into the bleak skies of adulthood, I will hold onto that little girl in hope that the memory of her would bring the tiniest bit of sunlight.
This is a goodbye, and I am just at the starting line.
“Thank you, for surviving this far”
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