Certain Uncertainties

I haven't written here in such a long time, and I think it's because I'm a little disappointed in myself-- with where I am, what I've been doing, what I haven't done, what I have yet to decide, and where I've regressed to. This will be long, but I felt like I owed it to... somebody... to give an update. I'm turning 24 soon. I don't know if that means anything or heralds any kind of celebration or realization except that next year I can rent a car. I digress.

How can family lift you up and drag you down at the same time? I don't really talk to anyone anymore because I honestly don't know what I'm doing with myself and I don't want to have to explain these uncertainties to anyone because, honestly, I can't even explain it to myself. Every one of my old childhood friends has, in one way or another, commented on how I seem different. Cynical. Bitter. Jaded. It's easy to look at the world as a bright-eyed 13 year old child. It's easy to sustain a hunger for things you've never tasted, to not harbor an incessant longing for places you've never been. Everything then is impersonal. As you get older, you earn more rights but the tacked on years also afford slews of limitations and responsibilites. It's harder to 'be your own person' and 'follow your heart' when that's apparently not what's been expected of you-- or granted. I didn't realize I had entered into a contract when I was born-- I guess I missed the fine print.

Coming out of college, you realize that most people fall into two rather general categories: the realists and the dreamers. There are always a few exceptions who succeed in finding that middle ground, but for the most part (at least from what I've observed), these are the two. Neither one is better than the other, but I always thought myself the latter. It's easy to dream big things... but definitely not as easy to do them. The notion of money and how it really does make the world go round (or perhaps fall apart) has never felt so evil and restricting to me as it does now. It is, in all honesty, the only reason I am back here. Why I can't leave again. Why I have to stay. I've settled myself with the fact that I can't be a young and eager traveller or a student pursuing a higher education, at least not at the moment. From a dreamer's point of view, it all seems so sad and limiting. To a realist, it's just life. I feel not so much a dreamer anymore and most days, I'm okay with that.

But when the Holidays roll around and the disparity between those who possess the green and those who suffer from a lack of it is amplified tenfold, I can't help but feel like I'm betraying the 13 year old me. When I catch up on newsletters I'm sent by organizations and non-prof's with shocking news and statistics regarding the statuses of certain peoples and countries, I hurt. I attempt to discuss these things with the people around me (family), but my words fall short amidst their heated debates on whether Kobe Bryant has lost his mojo or how unfair it is that Bristol Palin didn't win Dancing With the Stars. I am disheartened by the situations I am made aware of; even more so by the reality that no one here understands why.

So I guess that's why I'm updating: an attempt to explain to myself why I couldn't start being the kind of person I wanted to be just yet. The realist in me understands that for the next few years, I have to stay and work and fulfill an agreement I never knew I had. It also understands the possibility that the 13 year old kid in me might not ever die. So in truth, maybe I'm a little bit of both.

Maybe everyone is.