On mourning the years i’ve slept on.
I was at the mall with my girl friend queuing for some pretzel that just opened their new booth in town when an interesting moment hit me like a trainwreck.
In front of me was a group of a teenage girls who looked like they were sophomore highschool.
The mall was merry, it was friday night in the mid of May, it might’ve been the closest thing to summer jolly though my country had never celebrated Summer break as we live in tropical country. But the music was playing loud, the smell of freshly baked goods with the dash of sugary syrup and cinnamons were up in the air mixed with their chatters and giggles, all shared in between sharing gummies, newest school teas and passing k-pop idol’s photo cards. Sometimes, they’d took a pause, before bursting in excitement again, as if they’re savoring the moment, as if they would not see each other again at school, or giggling with one and another on the third period, or stressing over calculus and group projects together.
It might be just me romanticizing moments, but i know they way they’re laughing in unison, the way they placed their palms on each other’s was almost as if they wouldn’t have all the time and all the youth in the world to seize again.
And then there was me and the ache in the pit of my stomach that i have not yet discovered the name up until now, i think it’s between envy or just deep profound sadness that just had resurfaced again.
I’ll be vulnerable for a second, there are so many things im scared of in my life. But between dying alone and career-failure, i can say i’m mostly scared of not living my life to the fullest. If that sounds cliche to you, wait for many more paragraphs to come.
I guess i can say it’s all rooted in the misconception of finding happiness. Ever since I learned to stop placing happiness as a final destination but more so on the journey, i started to trace defect on that view: what if we have never actually felt happy because we haven’t grasped every bits of life? What if we slept on what supposed to be our golden years? What if one day, we wake up from the sweet dreams that is our youth, that we wasted away because we were clueless on how to live it and now we are slammed into reality that bites? What if we’re running out the time of our lives?
Sorry for dragging you into my little what-ifs game i know it must be a torture.
I’m sure im not the only one who has been told about the magic of being young. Most likely because it’s pertaining the formative years. The human brain on average learn things formatively at the age of 0–5 but i think from the age 17 to 25, we also experience what I’d like to call as ‘life through magnifying glass” (more on that on another writing piece), those years, are also formative years, we store every experience worth used to face the future turmoil. I think at that age, we also satisfied our needs to savor all the cringe-happiness, goofs, mistakes, all the self-finding journey and the highs and lows before constantly being in the surviving mode in adulthood for the rest of our lives until we die.
Which i didn’t have the luxury of, and i know a lot of people also don’t. But my experience bites more, because it’s one thing to lose it on fate, that you have no choice for an instance like having to support your family from a very young age that’s why you couldn’t live your youth to the fullest, but i did have choice, i was privileged enough, i got the all the source in the world to live up to my full potential and rock my stage at those very ages, but i chose not to, because i was too busy searching for meaningless validation.
If there’s anything i regret the most from my youth is that I didn’t keep my friendships close. Which brings us to this bumpy ride of back-tracking my youth,
I was a bright child, in elementary school, i did great. But by the time i got into highschool, i was almost nothing. I was not even good at socializing. And by the time i knew how to love a boy, i was blindsided. I started a long time relationship with my (back then) abusive ex boyfriend who managed to convinced me that everything outside of this relationship wouldn’t give me love. I too wanted to solely blame everything on him, but i think that is not fair, i was also the one to blame to be very honest. My younger self was so enamored by the idea of love, the idea that i was appreciated and celebrated if i was being loved romantically, i was only aware of the thought that romantic love is the only form of love worth fighting for. I began to push people away, neglecting my friends, that stopped me from having a tight knitted group of girl-friends that i can be loyal to forever. Not one day in my life goes by without thinking i could have a cup of coffee together with my highschool girl friends without hard feelings and awkwardness sitting in our throats like what i’m feeling now whenever i reached out to them through instagram DM. We could have a girls trip together, i could have dreamt about them being my bridesmaid to be.
And I thought i’d stop when the relationship ended. I thought i’d come back to the way i was before him and start over, i thought i have the time.
But turned out, i spent my early twenty’s going after the same thing. I had the privileged to be in dental school, which i should be proud of, but all those years i also mourn of the thought that i’ve done it so poorly, very half-assed and lukewarm when i should’ve been bold, i should’ve been ambitious, and driven, i should’ve been angry as a bull to grab my full potential, and celebrate it like crazy,
But I didn’t. I didn’t. On those years, i became passive. I dimmed my lights, and only thrive under the gaze of whoever giving me crumbs of love I thought i was so undeserving.
And one day, i woke up, and then i blew out my 25th birthday candles. And suddenly, there’s no time for shit and giggles, no time pursuing hobbies, no time to even call up old friends, no time to even fix up the messes i once caused, all i see is mounting responsibilities, burden to carry up the hills, and endless surviving.
I should’ve done more, shouldn’t i? I haven’t tasted everything, my youth flew in a blip, spent on mistakes after mistakes that paid me a lifetime damage. And i’m not ready to bid farewell to my youth… I don’t think i’ll ever be ready.
As I grew older, a new fear formed, i think I’m scared that i waste my life away, I’ve wasted my youth, how will i not fuck up my current and future life? How should i live my life really?
I am 28 now, and i know, a lot of people would say that i’m still a child, i am too young to even bury my youth and leave it behind for good because i too, still young. They said we can start over at any age. But I don’t know, if i can start anything, when I haven’t reached anything to begin with (i think i just invented a new term called adult-angst but I digress).
When i was writing this, i was also in the middle of writing a poem, one line goes:
But time, time is funny being.
Time once knocked my door, his hands are paper thin
wrinkly as he’s endured many cycles of life,
With his raspy throat coughing dust,
He asked me to make a trade.
And i trade him for love.
Time has gone now.
But all i ever get back was
Life sentence.
I couldn’t pin point what was so wrong with the last line. But thinking back now, i know why i wrote that, when i trade time for love or anything that’s “trivial”, i will forever be punished with the regret of not using time properly, for not living my life to the very fullest.
I remember the queue at the pretzel booth was getting closer, the girls in front of me now getting their own pretzel in their hand, munching and giggling, they walked away to nearby arcade.
Their laughter were still in the air, cramping in with noises inside the mall. And slowly fade away, and fade away.
Like my youth.
