I know for a fact that I have not been updating this blog as frequently as I had been last year, and I know I had been making up excuses and cliché reasons including the one saying that I currently am in my final year and assignment is taking its toll on my time management (oh, like I have one) and my so-called writing skills. I began to utilize lots of thesaurus to find the hopefully most suitable synonym that I don't really understand to replace a simple and really, a more understandable word for my assignments. I'm just glad to say that I'm halfway to the finish line and I just hope I'll stop procrastinating and actually put my mind on the upcoming assignments. "It must have been a really boring life" you would probably say. A selfish part of my brain actually agrees to that statement but my alter ego (yeah, right) tells me to see beyond the pain and stressful life where one day this will all make sense. Positively thinking, I do believe that a certain amount of "bad" things and feelings are essential because what would life be if it's filled only with "pretty" and potentially fake things or feelings? I'd say my life has been perfect, to a certain degree of perfection, of course. They said perfection is subjective, so I can't really explain to you why, but in the midst of the jumbled emotions, life-altering words left unsaid, and all that, I find my self-defined perfection and that's more than enough.
Anyway, I just finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a brilliant book, I should say. It's about this typical high school life in the eye of a schizophrenic, Charlie. The book is in the form of series of letters written by Charlie to an anonymous recipient. What's remarkable about this book is that the author uses simple wordings that magically capture the idea of what he truly means and in the end, it left me with a deep admiration of how simple things in life do count and just like what Charlie says: "It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book."
After the dance, we left in Sam's pickup. Patrick was driving this time. As we were approaching the Fort Pitt Tunnel, Sam asked Patrick to pull to the side of the road. I didn't know what was going on. Sam then climbed in the back of the pickup, wearing nothing but her dance dress. She told Patrick to drive, and he got this smile on his face. I guess they had done this before. Anyway, Patrick started driving really fast, and just before we got to the tunnel, Sam stood up, and the wind turned her dress into ocean waves. When we hit the tunnel, all the sound got scooped up into a vacuum, and it was replaced by a song on the tape player. A beautiful song called "Landslide." When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing.
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
That's the funny thing with growing old. As the years drift by, you began to understand that growing old doesn't always mean growing up. Even when you have reached your so-called legal age, or when you are old enough to make your own decision, you find yourself making the same mistakes again and again. You began to crave for that attention your parents gave when you were small, you wish you had time to sit down and read books -any books, without having to worry about your job or assignments, or you wish you were as free and careless as you were in your teenage years. But you assume realize that you have grown up so you began to fill those gap nonchalantly with things and pseudo emotions. Thinking that you have finally understood your responsibility as an adult, you began to surround yourself with your work, making lots and lots of money, spending weekends doing charts or presentation slides in the coffee shops, shopping for branded clothes and wear them around conceitedly. You find yourself avoiding sunlight while walking to your favorite café during lunchtime as it will burn your skin and cost you another round of check-up with your skin specialist (but that's okay, you'll do a monthly check-up anyway), you apply heavy makeups to cover up your flaws and yet you still feel empty.
Sometimes we, as adult, fail to understand the real meaning of growing up. We thought by calling ourself legal, we instinctively learn how to be grown ups. We spend our time running errands, chasing higher positions, achieving first-classes, spending money keeping up with the latest technology, and for what? We think our time is too precious to spend it at home, with the ones we truly love, the ones who stay and instead, we pay for those entertainment that doesn't guarantee a long-term contentment, we ignore the fact that we can get them all free, by making times for ourselves, by questioning what we really need, by slowing down our steps and listen to the music they play at the sidewalks, and most importantly, by doing things that make us happy, no matter how insignificant and pointless they might be.
