It has been a while, as per usual, since I’ve written my last post on here. I confidently let life happen and, quite honestly, so much can change in the matter of a single week. To put it into a couple of words: I’ve got plans and discoveries, so enjoy this double-decker of a post, compensating for the last two months. I’ve been on the right track: found out that I’m the only barrier standing between happiness and myself and I let go of my indescribable desire and need of a passionate romantic-sexual relationship, so I think I am ready to open myself a little more and be honest (especially with myself.)
Delusional states produce even greater over-delusional ideas that we as imperfect humans are also very incapable of materializing, so we usually go for what’s second-best. I am now volunteering at the city hospital, to try and lend a hand in this chaos and, for personal reasons, to open my eyes a little for the realm of reality: I am figuring out that after all, I’m left with too much time for my emotions and I let that get to my head; I’ve gotten lost in my own mind and that distracts me from the humbling brutalities that are going on around. Losing track of myself has also disturbingly helped lose my sense of responsibility and I need a shock-therapy to pull me back into reality, so I stay confident with my decision to volunteer. That is how, instead of going for second-best, I decided to go straight for the center of the target.
Lately my thoughts have been plagued by the future-picture I built of myself in my mind when I was just a child. Not that I’m not anymore, but I used to see my future-self the same: tall, blond, fearless and determined; very involved and hard-working, adventurous; romantic. In my mind I was almost certain I’d be a pilot: not only because my grandmother has had that wish for me forever, but also because I saw that as the closest I could get to being a bird – or rather, the symbol of freedom it stood as to me. But what’s been bothering me these days is hidden between the lines: it’s only me. I never imagined myself surrounded by friends, family, lovers; it was just me all along. And that childhood image has built into a fear, and into a desire. Now realizing I’m pushing my family away, I’m also pushing my friends away so that I could fulfill this decade-old image. My best friend told me the other day that I’m most certainly very fearless, maybe I am afraid of myself. As true as it is, I am my own worst enemy that I now have to fight in order to save people around me and not lose them before it’s too late; because, after all, I’ve had examples of that.
I thought that all along, I had lost this image of me from my childhood, I gave up and let others determine me; around the years I left middle school and entered the safe space of my very limited-number-of-students high school. That was the time I stopped reading the signs, but continued praying for them, because I was very aware of the fact that I had become a characterless vessel, just walking around seeking validation from the academically superior. My personal mental development was put on hold for a couple of years, because I thought I didn’t need it: I could just skip sixteen and jump straight to twenty-four, not knowing how impossible that was, to the point I got a job in a very great project, the end of which left a huge emptiness inside my brain. After graduating high school, I felt as I was nowhere, no friends, no job, nowhere to go – I had pushed it all away; had completely forgotten that I had a very important job to do: grow up, go through my youngest of years. I didn’t know where I had left off, where I had stopped in order to let myself grow emotionlessly. Saddened by that, I spent a year trying to figure it all out, then another year trying to put it back together; put myself back together, piece by piece.
As I’m writing about where exactly did I stop developing mentally and hit a boulder along the road of Teenage Mental Development, I’m feeling very anxious, for one, because I’ve never fully explored this exact part of my consciousness, where I compare myself to… myself. I’ve always been one to compare themselves to others, because I found a certain comfort of anonymity, at least that’s how I saw it. It was great to find my personal spiritual way last year, after I had not only taken the wrong one, I had derailed somewhere in the forest of misery. But now I’m not lost, just sitting at this crossroad and wondering which direction shall I take. But comparing myself to that ancient image, I found lots and lots of correlations. I am ready to take a deep breath and confess – instead of asking the question, I’m ready to answer it: I’ve fully met my own expectations of how I’d be at my current age, and I can’t believe it. I have fully completed the development cycle of the first twenty years of one’s life, and to proudly add to that, successfully, because I was never afraid to explore and ask.
In my new set of goals, I went to check on my new friend, who went through a mild academic catastrophe. It was a late afternoon meeting at her place, where we sipped our usual vodka-laced coconut-honey tea. There, we talked about our friendship, admired it, and then – most importantly – rated her relationship. I’ve come to think I’m rather a burden to my friends, who just have entered a relationship, mostly because they tend to completely forget about my existence during the course of their relationship. But I am grateful that this time, this isn’t the case. It seems that she has all the time in the world not only for her boyfriend, but for her friends also, so sending my love to her.
I am genuinely happy to see my friend carelessly in love with her boyfriend, because they are completely conscious about each other: no great expectations, nor underestimating themselves. It reminds me that in the time that people refuse to grow up, adulthood is still not in danger of disappearing. Comparing their relationship may be toxic, but I can’t help it, seeing the unserious children that my twenty-something-year-old colleagues and friends are. I see that they don’t rush it, but instead let it grade on it’s own, and maybe that is a good sign.
Thinking about that, I was walking late to catch my bus home, having sipped all the tea in her house, and watched an early 2000’s classic. I live in a remote area, where bus schedule usually ends early in the evening and the next one is early in the morning, so I should be speeding if I don’t want to sleep at the station. But as the minutes, and many cars in traffic, flied by, I decided to slow it down and naively play another decade-old superstitious silly game with myself, and childishly wished: if I catch the (last) bus at this pace, then maybe, just maybe, there is still hope for me ever falling in love. And as I am writing this, I happen to be riding the bus, that I caught just in time.
TOMMY EXPLORES THE WORLD 