Often I think, at 18.25 years old, that I have worked everything out. Arrogant, I know, but what else is there to be? I feel as if I have gone through the whole spectrum of emotions and I am waiting now for it to go on repeat. I am in a sort of limbo in my last year at school, stuck on boredom and stress. But I have had a glimpse at the extreme in this small section of my life and I fear that the rest of it will no longer be much of a surprise. Is this it? Sometimes feeling very sad, sometimes very happy and then long stretches of very little in between?
My dear rabbit died when I was 12, I have felt what grief feels like and I know that that grief will one day increase tenfold. I have been really, really riled up about the world we live in, but I feel a little tired, because there is always something wrong. I have experienced mental illness. I have been so angry, so enraged that I scream and cry and feel absent from my own body. I have believed in something so powerfully, so completely and then had that belief slowly crumble away into an absence of something that used to be strong. I have had love and heartbreak. I have cried so hard that I couldn't breath, or felt that I would never be able to stop crying. I have laughed so much that I crunched my stomach muscles until they ached. I have had friends I would steal the moon for, and loved them like sisters. I have cried and laughed with them, held their hands, kissed their cheeks. I have grown up in a family so passionate, so mad, so quick-tempered and so full of unconditional love that sometimes it has felt entire lifetimes unfold in single evenings in this house. I have travelled some of the world with these people, seen sunsets in places that are not my own. I have been at least four different people so far in my life and I am well acquainted with change so what possibly could there be that is waiting for me in the indefinite rest of my existence?
Almost absolutely everything. I do not know humanity at all. I have not felt all of its evils, its graces, its quirks. I have not even come close. I have gently dipped my toe in the water thus far, maybe my entire foot is in now, but I am yet to immerse myself completely. That happens when time passes, and fortunately that happens all the time. I am only just becoming familiar with the destruction people can create, the torture, the greed that they can feel, the conscious ability to cause another person pain. I do not understand that yet, but I know I will continue to see more of it. I do not have any idea of what love is. Only a small picture of it, I am waiting for it to explain itself to me. I do not know what death is. I am still trying to convince myself it is okay to never know. I am still pretending it will never happen to me or anyone around me. Death is something that happens to other people. Humanity is what is happening to me.
I know nothing. Right now, at 18.25 years old, the world is a complete mystery. I am arrogant to think that there is not much left. There is everything left. I have not worked anything out. I am exploring humanity, but I will never know it all.
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