It’s the end of formal education. That’s alright. You’ve been locked up on the daily 9-3.30 grind for the last 13 years. Looking back on the yearly school photos, you see how time has subtly then abruptly aged you, moving from chubby primary school smiling face, to spotted, frowning teenage years, with the brace-wire still unfixed, until 6th form knocks on your door and makeup is allowed. Now reaching the foot of Independence Mountain and stringing up your wires and clips, back pack at the ready, you have decided you’re ready enough to launch into the abyss of Adulthood.
It is a lie.
Unzip. Take off the rucksack that is still too big for you. Turn around and ask your teacher for another essay. You are not ready.
You try to console yourself listening to the comforting mellow voice of Foy Vance, but underneath those irish melodies is coarse harshness, the stroke of reality. See, people don’t tell you that the ‘Adult World,’ that elusive Mountain of Independence that we’ve constantly been trying to prematurely climb, from those early years when some of us tried alcohol before passing out in the park in front of school – at 2pm – to those sly drags on half puffed cigarettes, is a fake mirage that transforms into a barren, drought ridden landscape no DEC worker would recognize. Sometimes we burnt our fingers trying to touch it, sometimes we felt mature, all the time we had a bed and some comforting authoritative figure to take control again.
See, the ’Adultworld’ can at times be held together with bitterness, necessity and the daily 9-5 grind – an extra 2 hours makes a huge differences, see those grey hairs already approaching – no you’re not Rogue and reality isn’t Magneto, this is called…dun dun DUN… Stress. Looking through the eyes of a changeling, technically 18 in the elongated body of a twenty something with the naivety of an 11-year-old and the maturity of..well it depends on the situation – i have seen how time ages us faster than we realize. I have seen how those people we strive and aspire to prematurely mutate into, are secretly yearning to regress back into the childhood we are running away from. We can rant at our parents, we can cry on the phone to friends, we can write pitiful attention seeking suicide letters, and there will always be someone’s heart that we will be breaking on the receiving end – a heart that underneath it all breaks out of love and care. But once we step over that threshold, jumping high with a burst of youthful energy, there is no come down. We’re left falling through sand. There seems to be no one to vent to, no one who cares, because we are all part of the grind.
So what do these stress – I haven’t got time – MOVE – people do? They vent out on the public. The vulnerable, the irritating presence of those that are unwanted. I currently happen to be one of those – a street fundraiser (This will concern another post.) Yet, there is something very vulnerable and touching about these busy individuals. A yearning to find love,care, someone to just talk to.
I live in a broken city where people are yearning to just have their voices recognized. The temptation of money I can assure you, is not enough for me to run too quickly into that harness and start the upward haul of mountain climbing. My youthful heart isn’t as ready as I thought.
Your heart is ready, and you will always find an ear to listen when you choose to vent. The world out there may be cold but you will always have a coat that will keep you warm and sometimes it will even fit.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. You’ve managed to capture the essence of what it actually means “to mature”. From the wanting to grow up too fast, to growing up, realizing you’re growing and then wanting to be young again. Simply brilliant!