10th may. One day till I turn 22 and I feel this uneasy sense of anxiety seeping through my body. I can't explain where it's coming from and how EXACTLY it's making me feel. It's a sense of fear of moving forward and of adding a year to my life. It's scary. I know I'm not turning 50 or something, but if I really think about it, just a couple of years ago, 22 seemed like s huge number- and now, here I am...22 in 24 hours.
Life has passed by pretty quickly. It seems as if it was just yesterday that I was standing in the morning assembly line at school, aged 10. Life was so easy back then. People were so pure. The world didn't have so many expectations from you; your responsibilities revolved around completing your homework (colouring geographical maps, making sentences of the 5 new words you had learnt at school that day). Your friends were innocent and young- you'd play baraf/paani during school break times, you'd cry because a boy would hit you, the most scandalous thing you'd hear was about someone being caught reading sweet valley UNIVERSITY instead of TWINS during library period. Those were the good days. You had no regrets, no feeling of emptiness, regret or societal pressures controlling your every move. You were left to yourself to express yourself and be who you felt you wanted to be. You didn't know what the world was really like so you were always in a hurry to grow up- to SAY that you were a teenager, to experience independence and autonomy, to sit on that stage on your wedding day in that carefully picked out wedding dress. These were your dreams. You wanted to be that doctor, that actress, that vet, that model, that journalist- these were your goals.
But you always wanted more. You didn't know that growing up and entering the world was no walk in the park; you didn't realise that what you had was what older people envied- youth, freedom and carelessness.
You'd go to sleep and wake up with thoughts of that boy you'd had a crush on for months- the biggest heartbreak was the fact that he didn't know that you existed. So you'd do everything you could to be noticed. You'd feel conscious every time you'd see him- you wondered whether he thought you were pretty or not, were you talking okay, would he be interested in you? You'd fantasize about that day when he'd finally come up to you and profess his romantic inclination for you- but more often than never would this actually materialize.
You would jump around, play, skip, dance, scream and shout like no one was watching. Your egocentricity was a gift that you didn't treasure as much as you should because you were too busy yearning to grow up. You hated being told what to do by your parents, not being allowed to go to park towers without someones mom following you around everywhere you went, being told what sort of clothes you were and weren't allowed to wear outside the house, being interrogated about that boy you had begun talking to on the phone late at night, amongst other things.
Your parents were your enemies. In your eyes, you were the know-all. Their experience didn't count for shit. You'd have regular fights with them over the get togethers and parties they wouldn't allow you to attend, the boys who they felt were getting too chummy with you and of course..the constant negotiations about your curfew.
Life was good. We just didn't know it. And it's probably the same right now. On the night before my 40th birthday. I might look back at my twenties and wish that I'd been more grateful Of my youth. And I am. But I still can't help but fear growing up. This birthday brings me closer to significant life events such as graduating from college, having to get a job, getting married, managing married life, raising a family etc. I'll never get this time of my life back again. It'll never be the same again. And as much as I want to sit here and try to treasure this moment and this age, I can't help but feel like rewinding and starting my life from scratch. I have regrets that I wish to amend, experiences that I'd like to relive, people who I'd like to meet again, family traditions that I'd like to reignite, actions that I'd like to undo, bad decisions that I'd like to correct and peace of mind that I'd please like back.
Our innocence is something of the past, and corruption is the thing of the present. Sometimes I think about the effort our parents put into trying to lead us on to the right path- the lengths they'd go to to make sure that we learnt to differentiate between right and wrong so that we could preserve our innocence, so that we'd would become good human beings. What would they think now? Have we done justice to their love? Have we cheated them in a way? What will it be like when we have children of our own? If only our parents knew.
So here I am. One day before my birthday, looking back on my life, thinking about the good times and the bad. I've had a pretty fucking good life. Gods been very kind to my family and myself. I've gotten everything that i ever wanted- whether or not it was beyond our means. I'm not emotionally scarred in any way- any regrets that I have are due to my own decisions and actions ; they cannot be blamed on anyone else but myself and I'm okay with that. I want to stay where i am. I don't want to grow up. I want live life in rewind, if that's possible. I know that's not possible but it's worth wishing for.
Happy birthday.
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