Paul Kelly - Peace III
19 and a half years of age, I know myself that I haven't half endured what life has to offer. Nonetheless, the journey so far has been unexpected to say the least. You greet, you meet, you love and then you lose.
Like the juice you drink and the food you eat, no matter how much you enjoy it and devour it, it'll finish and you'll move onto another piece. Yet you can't forget the taste it left in your tongue - the bitter sweet taste that always had you going back for more.
It's human nature to cling onto what you know, onto the things that you turned to when you were sad or laugh with when you made a joke; it is human nature to be wrapped so tightly around this thing that comforts you, this thing that sees you.
'Just do it, everyone else does'
Adolescence taught me one thing: there is no such thing as peer pressure if you subconsciously contemplate it. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't contemplation if you are surrounded by teens that systematise drugs, partying, sex, rebellion - you grow in that commune thinking that you're living in normality. Having been around different cultures, I suppose that the normality of a pubescent teen of any culture is nonconformity.
To conform or to not conform, that is the question.
Either way, you are not you.
'Ohh Jane so what? Next thing you know you'll be old and laugh about it'
This is the greet part. Along the journey you fall for crushes, make new friends, fall in love. Hoping that someone had warned you (or somehow drilled it into your stone-hard head) that the chances of it ending in holding hands, skipping towards the horizon in the spring breeze during sunset, you might have... MIGHT... have gone about everything differently.
Your first impression is everything. Remember nonconformity? Be you. That girl in class that got all the boys? They don't want her now. That boy that played all the girls? They don't want him now.
But who dares leak their deepest, darkest, inner thoughts. Everything that you're surrounded by is all fun and games until you're stuck in the tide - what makes them think you will laugh about it? I hurt him along the way. Now you're the one hurting.
Now that I met you, I'm on lockdown. Well now that you see me through a clear glass, I will shatter this glass back to my nonconformity so you don't mock me because of me.
'But Jane why bother? You can do so much better!'
Comments can so easily be dropped. Yes okay, I shall nod my head along to it pretending to absorb every useless-in-the-future advice you give. Humans latch on the things that have seen them grow, because they give them that extra authenticity that they need to boost their self esteem. Not only are we subliminally insecure, we are creatures of habit. That is why we pretend to not conform, to be different... To be unique. Truth is, we are conforming and blending into the sex-driven background of this generation, we use habit as a short-cut to our excuses.
I am up at 3am. Overthinking unrealistic thoughts and setting the story for my nightmare. I can advise myself but I do not take it, this is to the Jane in the parallel universe that is ready to hurt him.
Sit your sorry self down. Revenge is sweet, success is sweeter. You attacked head-first straight into his sensitives, now you are wondering why and what happens next.
I won't wipe your memory, I will indulge in it.
My nonconformity I believed to have been so exclusive to others; strive to not be the duplicate of every typical binge-loving student, there is more to it than waking up and asking yourself why.
Genuiness. It doesn't matter how you try to wiggle your way out of things, the past will bite you so hard on your ass that even when you're screaming... your words are silent.
