Old Soul

I was called ‘Sir’ by my high school English teacher. My parents never gave me ‘the talk.’ Nor ever explained what a mortgage was, or how compound interest functioned. All of that I already knew. A fun run in the park, hands crusted over with sand, did not appeal to me ever as a child. Books, like many others, drew my gaze more than toys ever did. 

I am done talking about my past. Things under burned bridges should tread on by, lest they be hit with falling, emblazoned, debris. A future of simple complexities paints my happiness. Sometimes I think my happiness is so simple it doesn’t even deserve to exist. Because nothing in life ever exists simply. Sometimes I think that dark hand should grab me and pull me under the bed at night. Just as everyone does. Sometimes it drives me insane. As I write this is does more so. That my ideas, my thoughts, are so purely non-unique. How the great writers of times and lands long past can simply write such greater things than I, such greater things than themselves. And here I sit, trying to cope with the idea of such individual decimation. 

Most cling to this for comfort. Their understanding in the human experience. Their connection to this fundamental aura that sells novels. Is that the answer? TO embrace this infinity well of humanity. To jump in and let go of yourself and become one of this ‘human experience’ one of this ‘literature.’ 

In my attempt towards literature, my writing pulls and pushes against itself, hating at how bad it is. How bad it is at being unique, how good it is at being so ubiquitous. That every word I write has been argued for and against. By amazing philosophers, with hundreds of years of history and conflict I’ve no idea about. That every idea I postulate has been proven, disproven, and then proven again, and is already in practice. 

But then the mechanics take over. Every original idea has ten thousand failed ideas of the same substance. If my writing is to become anything close to literature, mastery of it in all forms will provide the uniqueness that I seek. That maturity, that Old Soul feeling of knowing what you are and why you are is necessity. Every really good book either knows what it is at the start, or the journey of finding out is what makes the book really. So hopefully my writing will adopt my Old Soul, and with that Old Soul I bring out the Old Soul in other people. To start this process all over again and push them in their artistic career. 

The enigma of my emotions slowly unravel on this page. I start with the mornings, because they are the hardest part of any day. My face rolling over itself, is ill-prepared for the slogg of the day. And because of that I am sad. That I do not control when I wake, nor when I sleep. I do not control when I have free time. I do not control what other people think of me. So while they stare, I stare back, trying to claim again my own control that is both won and lost in staring back. I have won because I judge them as they judge me. I have lost because I am simply prey to the judgements my environment that is embedded within me. 

School feels like an attack on my free will. I typically do not learn what I want to learn. I cannot skip a day without repercussions. I cannot control my week at all. Friday through Sunday is the break, then back to the Week. And it isn’t bad. It’s Rather quite generous actually. But the fact that I cannot binge watch a show, which may mean the world to me, due to school, feels bad. And I recognize the minutiae of my sadness, and how sad is the scope of my sadness? 

Iceland is an impossibility. Road trips are too. My bubble, infinitely small in length but infinitely large in depth, chokes me while providing me the structures of society. We live in constructed timelines dictated by digital things. And thank goodness for that. How else would I get pizza? Or learn how to find integrals?

All of these haphazard realizations point to the ablution of free will.  Genetics and society in culmination. Their twisted tango torments the entirety of my thoughts. 

In the pursuit of the original, my mind fights these two impossibly complex enemies. Something new and something fresh. But understandable by those with whom I am tormented here with. So have this nonsensical ledger of my sadness for my pursuit of the original.

Even sadder is in my young age, I am more free than most. I have no mortgage, no kids, no job. But the daunting gullet of independence looks me down at the dawn of each day. Begging to swallow me whole, forcing me back to my parents with my tail between my legs. 

So if I feel caged in my opportunity how will adulthood feel? A wife, kids, a mortgage. The idea of Iceland is even more ludicrous. Or maybe the submission of my free will to those that I care about will give me a platform for happiness. 

So what if I was rich? I get found by an agent, make it onto the bestsellers list. I have money to spend and responsibilities I enjoy. Iceland is far less ludicrous now. 

But here I paint the picture of a traveller. A man who likes to live everywhere and nowhere. This is so far away from me that I cannot parse that statement. 

I live in my room. Inside my infinitely deep bubble hoping to find some happiness with an incredibly lucky series of keystrokes. The only thing that makes me consistently happy is knowing I am in control of my own time. 

Lucky enough, happy enough, that I can tackle the next few days of my life with some irreverence. Experience the things I hate within normal life to ‘fuel up’ enough to write again, just like this. 

So again is this cycle, a lack of control of my own thoughts and emotions. Even within the twisting nether of my mind I lose sight of what I control and what I don’t. That which is closest to me blocks my view of what I want the most.

Writing happy is something I do very rarely, and when I do it is clichéd and flawed. So writing happily and with nuance is something I can’t do, nor will ever be able to do. 

But I do think I just got a little lucky.