XIX

Nineteen is just a transition. I don’t care much for the age itself, but what it means: I’m one year nearer twenty, one year nearer the two-decade mark ending my teenage stage. As if it was something to mourn for, no. But it is something to miss.

Time is an illusion, age (and pretty much everything else) is a state of mind. I’m not in the mood to preach—is this a change? Perhaps, a symptom of getting older. The whole the-world-is-against-me-and-don’t-understand-me phase is old enough to be discarded for something more practical, lasting and devoid of romance. What?

Surrender.

At nineteen, I don’t think I have the right to sound world weary yet. I still have a long way to go, with a closet three fourths full of tragedy waiting to be worn like black ill-fitting clothing. But don’t you think everyone is forced to grow up faster nowadays? Technological innovations, social revolutions and individual rebellions hasten the pace of this permanence which is change. I am told I don’t sound like anyone below twenty. Maybe this observation pertains to the general cynicism, hypocrisy and world weariness which I seem to exude like miasma.

Random, maybe fun question: am I a happy person and/or am I happy? I think there’s a difference. I don’t look like a happy person most days, because I’m always mooning and gloomy as I stalk the halls of the university. I am not a happy person to be with most times too: I’ll snub you if I don’t like you or even if I liked you I would still snub you if I find that we have nothing interesting to say to each other. By all appearances, I am not, I repeat, usually a happy person. But I’m usually happy.

I have existential angst and realize the pure and applied pointless which is life. But I’m not the sort who lets it get in the way of my hedonistic tendencies, which are relatively shallow. Clothes, good conversation, books, shoes, fulfilling relationships—these make me happy. I try not to look for absolutes or for things which can never be found. Sometimes I ask: who am I kidding? I know there are things beyond myself and my world which maybe I should spend my lifetime trying to understand. But that wouldn’t make me happy, would it? This is the road I choose to take, so far at nineteen. A road of denial and contentment.

Who am I kidding? Well, just me. That's all that matters, really.