Getting Away
Guess I was born to make mistakes
But I ain’t scared to take the weight
So when I stumble off the path
I know my heart will guide me back
.
Growing up is sometimes synonymous with growing away. Actually, most of the times. Growing apart. From people, places and things you have essentially grown to love all your years. Every 5 years or so I transcend everything I ‘ve known in that exact timeframe. And it utterly, completely, totally sucks. I love airports for this exact reason. Something bout leaving – depatures – makes me happy. It may stem from being a self confessed escapist. Or I could run some Jungian or Alderian analysis bout my cracked psyche and whip up an entirely new theory about my predilection for getting away when I am in the middle of things. The calmer the world around me gets, the faster I want to escape it. All bets must be off if I stay within the parameters of any given situation.
At 18, I left Uni to explore what the cliches hanging large in the big bad world. It wasn’t half as dangerous or elusive as it was painted out to be but the experience made me a more “solid” person, in a manner of speaking.
At 21, I went back to complete my degree and realized that my simmering disdain for conventional education was in fact a more here-to-stay variety hatred that would make it almost impossible for me to contemplate studying in this environment anytime in the future. Boxplots and Keynesian theories aside.
At 22, I left a secure job to welcome 6 months of dreaful penury because I couldn’t quite wrap my brains around the whole corporate stoogery that is hardwired so well in most of the middle class populi in this city. Or perhaps, the country.
At 24, I ate crow, went back to the confines of a rickety building that enabled me to understand myself better just by understanding the larger society I was now supposed function within. Hello, Journalist!
At 25, I ‘ve commenced living alone in a city thats alternatively referred to the city of dreams and the city of vultures. Pick, choose, stay or leave.
True, that!
So, at every stage something had to be left behind to make room for something new. Something fresh and less complacent. I am often guilty of bolstering a sang froid that makes most of the congrey I’ve managed to cultivate along the way querulous, frequently. But, this who I’ve chosen to become. This is me. As of today.
Inner Dj’s spinning Erykah Badu – Did’nt Cha Know?
Inner Bookslut is devouring “The Second Sex”. Again. Sigh!
The Fine Art of Poisoning 
I never understand the whole growing up thing, for myself, or for others. Or at least I think I do, but hwen it happens, it’s sometimes a little dreary to actually see. So much of it always seems to be about trundling ever onwards, leaving your debris behind, and somehow managing not to turn around to look back at it. I guess it bothers me sometimes, what happens to all that crap…?but then I had a couple of blasts from the pasts recently, bizarre flashbacks from childhood extravaganzas that left me half sick and half dizzy with nostalgia. and coupled with the wizardry of google, none of it was very good for my health, anyway. (the discovering how gleefully content certain people I once knew are, I really could’ve done without. The last thing I need is a Carrie Bradshaw style voiceover over my crumpled evenings.)
It did make me realise though how little I missed it all. And that growing up – the remaking yourself and scattering of the ashes part of it – is not so bad. Being aboard a perpetual cruiseship of escape. I get the 5-yearly need to hit refresh – although it’s not so much when things get too calm that I want to run – it’s when the garbage bags, spilling at the brim, really start to reek.