here's the life i've always longed for
it’s almost september and i’m longing for something bigger than myself, again.
i’ve lived a life of watered-down summers when you compare them to most other peoples’ ones. it becomes more apparent every year, when someone’s travelling somewhere (sometimes the same place for the 10th time) and i still don’t own a passport at twenty-one. it makes me feel weird, almost shameful or embarrassed? my body prickles with this white hot heat of upset at my lack of “normality.” i’m angry at the world for making me lesser in my experiences through my circumstances.
when your go-to “gotcha!” of two truths, one lie icebreakers is that you’ve never been abroad it hardly feels rewarding to have everyone think it was a lie when it’s the truth.
travel isn’t everything, and it isn’t the places you go that make the memories meaningful, that’s not really my point. it’s more about the context that makes that travel possible to begin with, the privilege of free time, of money, of stable friendships or relationships. i’m sure when you have all of those things in small amounts, not even surplus, it’s very possible to have summers that feel infinite. sometimes i feel like travel would be the biggest “sign” of me finally being free, of reaching some sort of landmark in my otherwise largely empty life. because it would mean i have all those things. i want to reach that point where i’m done waiting.
it’d just be nice, to be somewhere and feel so far removed from who i have to be at home. to have a chance at being myself instead of the palatable, pleasant blank-slate i make myself into, to be more than just agreeable.
my life is split in two, where i wasn’t allowed to leave the house alone (up until age nineteen) and now, where i am able to leave the house alone, mostly. i need to get permission. when you’re not allowed to leave your house by yourself until you’re almost in your twenties it makes you resonate with art at the top of this entry so achingly it makes me feel sick.
how much is there that i never saw, never experienced? how much more could i have been in my teenage years if i were given the chance to be as large and expansive as other people my age at the time were able to be? i mourn how much further along in my life i could be right now if i was given the same experiences my current friends had — holidays, strong family relationships, friend groups in school, experiences.
i see pinterest photos of teenagers, probably five years younger than me at the bleach at sunset, with friends, having their birthday celebrated, maybe even having something planned for them or a surprise, being out on bikes, in fields, sleepovers, being happy in any location you can think of.
it makes me cry to think about how i’ve never had any of it. always the planner of anything my friends and i ever did, so it always feels like my fault that i never made these things happen. i should’ve tried harder to be a teenager the “right way.”
my teenage years aren’t coming back and i don’t know how to recapture the self discovery i should’ve been experiencing back then. how do i start knowing who i am? genuine question. how do you start that self discovery process when you’re twenty-one and horribly lonely and go unnoticed in the world so easily?
i wish i knew.
sometimes it feels like college was a blip between being homeschooled and being where i am now. i’m alone a lot, in my room a lot, writing and drawing a lot. it feels very cyclic and it’s scary. i already feel years behind all the people i used to feel entirely equal with. everyone seems to know how the world works, how to be in public comfortably, how to change their lives. i feel childlike, incapable.
i’m a dog on the loneliest side of the fence, but the world keeps going whether i’m apart of it meaningfully or not. i want to be meaningful without it being coloured by my jealousy of everyone else’s experiences. my jealousy is something i always say i’m “trying to get over” like it’s a summer season resolution, but i don’t think it’s ever worked. when i see the people i love doing things with people i wish i could do with “my people” if i had any, i find it hard not to hate them for it just in that moment. it’s a horrible feeling and i feel revolted at myself for it. i gnaw at myself until the envy subsides, i soothe myself with promises that maybe one day i’ll have those things too, i just can’t right now.
the inability to shed my jealousy, my lack of stability and privilege, my lack of close relationships, all the fears that keep me chained to that lonely side of the fence — it’s suffocating to know none of those things can be instantaneously changed right now.
everything takes so much time, including reaching the life i’ve always longed for. i think everyone has moments where they feel like the dog who’s left behind, who’s bound and stuck in place while the world moves forward without them. i think that feeling encompasses my whole life. i’m terrified by the prospect of not being free or not “getting there” to this future i’ve kept myself afloat for the promise of.
it’s one of those things where no one else can save you from it, no one can change our fate but ourselves. i’m not sure where to start with changing my life, and what things need to be done for me to reach this idyllic state that being on the other side of the fence implies. maybe there’s no step-by-step anyone can give us, but we know the feelings we want to feel, maybe wanting to feel those feelings will move us to action enough. i think we know what we want better than we think, but we get stuck on the how of getting there instead of the simplicity of doing things that spark a feeling.
a feeling can become an action, a habit, a change, a life. i want a life. i want to be courageous and loving and hopeful and i want to contain multitudes, i want to be complex and contradictory and give myself the chance to be whoever i want to be without any rigid expectation to stay like that. i want to be uncontainable and full and free.
none of this will be immediate. but i’m trying so hard to believe that all my wants for the future will soon become what i experience. maybe that can only happen by letting myself enjoy my current day-to-day instead of wishing it away with all my hopes of the future. there won’t be a future without a now for it to be built on. maybe i can start there.
slowly but surely, “how can i make my now better?” turns into a deeper knowing of what you want, and maybe you start asking “how can i connect deeper with people?” and “how can i learn this skill?” and “how can i reach this goal?” and maybe, eventually, you’re on the other side of the fence.
i hope i’ll be there too, someday.
from the warmth,
char ♡
thanks for reading!
this entry’s song recommendation: tiny moves by bleachers