I always wondered why they keep saying turning 30 is some sort of inevitable crisis. I had never been concerned with ageing, I have always felt old, I have always felt I was born in the wrong century.
Now I am about to cross that bridge, I think I am beginning to see what they mean. Or maybe it’s just all in my head. The gradual gain of weight. The intense reflection on my career and financial standing. The reducing curve of chasing excitement and highs. The endless pondering on whether this is where I want to stabilise or to draw my flatline. When I was a kid the only thing that kept me from offing myself was this - the endless possibilities of my future, that no matter how bad those days were surely my future would be better, happy and bright. I used to think I would have my own family - a good husband, cheerful children, a loyal house pet I was certain would be a dog, even a bunch of friends like those in movies and TV shows. That once free from the past, I would still have more than half of my life to design and build on my own. Now I realise that all the things I have done in life were to keep me from those exact things I have longed for. It’s depressingly funny. How I hopped from relationship to bad relationship. How I never really took work seriously and just ridiculed my wasted potential. How I antagonized people who were once friends over petty things and scrubbed them off my life. How even now, when someone new comes along and I start to feel something familiar, a kindling of some sort, I immediately end up doing something to sabotage a friendship before it has even begun.
It’s a shame I’m not stupid. Sometimes I think life would be much more enjoyable and bearable if I were. But I know better. And I’m not in denial. I am conscious of my actions and their aftereffects. I know that I do these things so I would not have any ties to this earth. Fuck. I sound like a melodramatic teenager. I disgust myself sometimes. How typical. But this is my space and I should have no shame. Right? …right?
Have I regrets? I don’t know. When I think of one, an immediate contradiction rises. It would be nice to have friends to drink with and stuff, until they start sharing problems you have to pretend to understand. I long for a deep connection, but one that I would be able to switch on and off at my whim, which is virtually impossible because unsurprisingly people have feelings and tend to get offended by my quirks and to be honest, the list of people I have hurt is long enough to be getting on with. See, I am not entirely heartless. I’m a little sadistic, and I know it, and that’s why I stay away. It’s for their own good, really. Hah. I could have got farther and higher in my career, but what for? I don’t have and don’t want a family, I hate responsibilities. I earn enough to sustain a living, with extra for spoils. Besides, I have this savage satisfaction with mediocrity. Yes, I say silently to the universe, I am wasted potential, I am a sheep, I am a robot, I am a speck that the world would not miss nor notice if I vanished. And I am at peace with this. I have long stopped despising people for their ambitions, a part of me even admires them. Do they get a kick out of being mighty and powerful? Maybe. My own kicks are more provincial. One thing I enjoy is watching people clamour for that ladder, knocking each other out of the way, while I disappear into the walls, just a brick, with my silent laughter.
I don’t know… I keep swimming in this existentialist bullshit. Well, not really swimming, more staying afloat. Just… here.
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