My attempt to grow

I remember being fifteen, thinking parts of my brain were suffocating other parts of my brain. Believing all logical thinking I ever had, was being suppressed. I could only apologise for the forthcoming decisions, the person I was about to become, was about to make. Lacking sense, power, direction and means; to better myself and change what was about to become a self fulfilling prophecy, I ultimately became the inescapable. I was in a position, where I was able to predict my demolition but I didn’t feel as though I was the architect of my forthcomings. For the first decade and a half of my life, it was hard not to feel as though I was writing an introduction; for my journey of self destruction.

When you are so young and misguided, seeing growth as progression and not transgression, is a civil war in your mind that is double binding. There are things I wish I’d known when I was growing up, lessons of life I knew others had endured and failed to pass on the wisdom. Only now that I have lived them myself, do I realise that is vital to the growth. There is a difference between shading people from your mistakes and letting them forge their own path, I just wish I had seen this when I was young; maybe I could have spared myself unnecessary resentment. I looked back on my life and I asked myself the same godforsaken question tirelessly, aiming to mind map the reason I was the way that I was. Before realising, that it doesn’t matter why I am the way I am. Fundamentally, all that matters is why and how, I am going to plant my seeds instead of sewing them, to allow myself to grow instead of dwell.

The day I learnt that some people come into your life, only to show you what love is not - was the day I decided the only thing I have control of, is the love I put out into the world. People act like you can gain emotional intelligence from listening to peoples stories and attempting to grasp perspective but in the same way wisdom comes with maturity, like finesse in wine; you grow to understand these things. As you grow up physically, you grow psychologically. With that power, you allow yourself to unlock regret in your past to see that you would never be all that you are now, without all that you were then.

As an adolescent, it was easy to be frustrated by people’s presence. Forgetting that this is my life and I can make the decision to adjust to their absence. After hours of pacing my room in a pattern that left my footsteps sounding deafening, I drew the conclusion that the same way that sun always follows rain, happiness must always follows pain. So even in my times of disparity, I started to see it all as growth and I promised myself that although this life may not be my son, I will raise this roof.

That was before I knew, that a single year and a single virus, could burn my life like a match to paper from the inside out. Replacing all of the light white paper, with fine black lettering; reminding me only of the difference between dusk and dawn. I watched the world as I knew it fall apart, like a sandcastle that couldn’t withstand a wave; only this was no wave, this was a tsunami. Where there is wreckage, there is room to rebuild.

So I took the opportunity, that might have been my only, one to act without being under scrutiny; to redecorate my life like it was a new summer house.

I took space from relationships that made me behave in ways that were less than myself and I stopped doing things I didn’t want to do, period. I’ll admit, that did get a little out of hand when I decided not to get out of bed for a handful of weeks at one time. Through it all, I kept the defining fact at the forefront of my mind, which was that I am doing this for my growth.

It has been six years since I was 15. Although, 2020 made it feel like a matter of months, or better yet minutes. My brain, again, tangled.

So in an ode to every version of myself I have ever been, 2021 will be the year that I become the best version yet.

The year I jump at every opportunity to see everyone I know and love, like it might be a year until I can again. The year I cherish job opportunities like they are gold in a sewage. Twenty twenty one, is the year I prove to myself and everyone else; who I was always meant to be.