You know it's funny to think on how back when I was 18 I felt it was already time to become an adult, to grow up, to be strong, yet after all the years, I'm still the same.
Of course I've grown a lot. But I'm still the same.
Take this for instance, this act of blogging. I don't exactly know why I'm here at the moment. Back then I used to write a lot here. A bit too much, in fact. But these days no one blogs anymore. Everyone's grown old.
But I'm here, seated in front of my bedroom window, looking out at the darkness of the night, listening to Passenger, feeling that same mixture of feelings I've always felt whenever I blogged back then. It's funny, how those years are gone, but I'm still here, still doing the same thing, yet in my life, as a whole, I'm a whole different person, doing a whole different thing.
I've stepped into adulthood, worked my ass off for money, paid my own remaining fees required for graduation, spent my money on things like food, toiletries, and entertainment. I've worked until the skin of the palm of my hands split open. I've woken up to the feeling as if I've gotten into a brawl the night before. And within a month, I've closed a chapter by quitting and opened another chapter by running away into a new place.
It's remarkable, how much change can happen within just a few weeks. Impulsive decisions, isolation, emotional roller-coasters, everything just keeps on cycling and cycling and I think I've got what I wanted: To be too busy to even think about nostalgic moments in my life.
To be too busy to feel frightened about the future.
To be too busy to even think about how unfair things are in my life.
To be too tired to even remember about broken dreams.
It's becoming real, me settling as a mediocre adult. And while I can't deny that sometimes I stare into nothingness and wished that I at least had a shot to keep chasing my dreams and the circumstances were a lot easier in my life, I actually feel that I'm tired of running and chasing.
I feel as if I haven't really given myself the chance to live up to a certain expectation I've set for myself in the years I grew up, and that I'm really not making use of my full potential, but in the end what's the use? What's the use of running and chasing and achieving?
And these questions make me sad because I know I'm better than this. But at the same time I'm tired. I'm tired of living and that fact scares me.
Within less than a month I've tried F&B and retail, and that's just a month after teaching, which coincidentally overlapped with the brief period of getting the feel on how it is to be a published author.
That's like four chances in a year to live four different lives, so I know I shouldn't be complaining. I can sort of say that my 2018 has so far become quite colourful.
Nothing could ever replace my busriding phase which I'm absofuckinglutely sure is one of the best chapters in my life. But right now I'm quite contented with what I'm doing and where I am and with the people I'm surrounded with. It's hard to go around feeling a bit skeptical on building connections with people, fearing that I'm thinking too highly of the people I'm with, but I'm learning. I'm learning to just be in the moment and trust that they genuinely enjoy my presence as much as I actually enjoy being with them. But there's that annoying little feeling of self-doubt that always screams into me, telling that I don't belong, and I hate it.
I hate it because that voice yells at me everywhere I go. I always get the feeling that I don't belong, that people actually don't like me, that I'm actually the only one feeling happy to be 'part' of them. And with the presence of this fear, I already know that in this new place, I'm actually liking these people a bit too much to the point that I can't act natural around them. I feel the need to please everyone. And that is, again, absofuckinglutely annoying because hell, screw everyone, screw everything, I actually want to be an island and not get attached to anyone or anything anymore.
But this is the essence of me, and lately I begin to think that it's a curse to have this feeling. Because actually it's this nice feeling that also makes me feel I want to just isolate myself and not build connections because in the end everyone will hurt you. Or you know, even more accurately, you hurt yourself and you know no one can help you even when they want to. In the end, it's you who doesn't want to be helped.
I think as I'm getting older I'm getting quite good at understanding myself and that's the scary part. The more I understand myself the more I understand what I really want in life and my wants scare me.
I'm not worried, of course. It's who I am that scares me. It's the issues within me that I never really dealt with that scares me. You know I don't want to be a shitty adult who releases everything at everyone else, but honestly in these past two months I've learnt some ugly things within me that I know I should be dealing with.
Then again I'm not really sure whether at this age I'm already old or still too young or somewhere in between, or something that people can still label as a 'work in progress.' If that's the case, if I'm still allowed to feel like a work in progress, then again I think I shouldn't worry much about this adulting thing.
For now, life would revolve around working my ass off for money. I know that sounds pretty boring and meaningless, as if I've lost all ambitions and hope, but that's the only accurate way to describe it. It also sounds like a tragedy, how the most-likely-to-succeed back in high school is now a minimum wage paid worker in the retail line, but again I'm just trying to keep myself alive without troubling others.
I guess in the end I'm just walking my way towards living my own prophecy in my song 'Canned Coffee,' sipping away that bitterness and living life as how it is.
I'll probably die as another no-one, but everyone's a no-one anyway. I'll probably just end up as a boring adult working my ass off until the day I die, but everyone's doing that anyway.
