Sugar Words

This blogpost is basically notes from my quarter life circus. Enjoy the clown-ness.

All I do is screw it up… I say it with a muffled voice as I try not to cry. Suddenly, being 25 feels like walking carefully through life, like every step could make something crack. Around people, around my ambitions, around love. One wrong word, one wrong move, and I’ll be carrying the weight of it for years.

Hope and cynicism sleep in the same bed. You cannot wake one without the other. And here I am, lying still, hoping that the sun feels a little kinder tomorrow. That the cold inside my bones softens. That this melancholy of becoming, this ache of changing shape again and again, will quiet down, even for a day.

How many times have people in their 20s felt that what they are feeling will never end? That this ache is permanent. That the person they’re waiting for will never show up. That they’ll always be searching for something that makes them feel fulfilled, something that makes their parents proud, something that makes their heart stop aching for once. How many nights and mornings do they spend hoping, replaying, wondering if maybe this is all there is?

They say experiment. But no one talks about how hard it is to keep doing it when failure is looking you in the eye and you are not allowed to blink. No one tells you how heavy it feels to hold on to a dream you built from your own fiber and tenderness, only to realise one morning it no longer fits the world you live in. That the people who once believed in it have moved on, quietly. And there you are, left to crush it with your own hands and pretend it doesn’t hurt.

Find something that makes sense, but ensure it is viable within three years. Try new things, but not too often. Love with your whole heart, but not too obviously. Be kind to everyone, but never forget to be hard on yourself. Speak up, but only when it’s convenient. And when you finally get the love, the job, the apartment with good lighting, may everyone clap for you politely and say, finally, you got it right, but wait what happened to her?

STOP. I want to get off this “not-so-merry-go-round.”

I am here, and that’s enough. I am here, and that’s all that matters. I will taste everything, even if it makes me sick. I will love hard, even if it means to find my shattered heart on the kitchen floor. I will run, fall, and lie still on the grass. I don’t even remember how old I am anymore.

Do you remember how old you were when you smiled without a reason, when your face hurt from joy and not exhaustion?

I want to laugh so hard it feels like being reborn. To cry so deeply it washes the dust off my soul. To feel everything until I know what it truly means to be twenty-something, what it feels to experience life not for the performance but to rattle me awake from this plague of numbness.

Yes, I will screw it up. Probably again and again. But maybe that’s the whole point. When was the last time you stumbled and laughed while still lying on the floor? Let me have the stories worth holding the breath for.

You can have the polished life, devoid of any edge(s).