The older I get, the more past there is to dig into and drown in. I try to tell myself to not be so nostalgic but the current is too strong and I slip into the quicksand of childhood memories.
If my life was a Hollywood movie, this would be the point where I would finally get 'closure'. I would sink deep into the quicksand, wrestle with the turbulent undergrowth and then a few days later, I'd fly out of it a new woman. The final scene of the movie would be me with an arm outstretched like superman, reaching into my 'bright' and 'hopeful' future. The sun is shining and there's a happy song playing in the background, ready for the credits to roll and for the viewers to leave the cinema in a state of awe. The women are bawling as their boyfriends and husbands hand over tissues after tissue. "That was amazing, s-s-she was so a-a-ama-zing," they blubber as they leave.
But my life is not a typical Hollywood movie. I don't have closure. I am not sunk in the quicksand of nostalgia and childhood memories. Instead, I bob up and down like a fish. There are some moments where I feel like I am drowning and there are other moments where I am floating above the sand, confident that I will be that stereotypical romantic heroine.
I'm not entirely sure this analogy has been useful but I think it conveys this sense of limbo that I feel like I am in. I find it too difficult to shut off the past and to move on. What does 'moving on' even mean? How do I forget what has happened and learn to live my life because years have passed and there are things which I feel I should understand by now and I don't. I've noticed that over the last few years, as I have moved into the world of the 'adult' (that strange, alien state of being), that my mind has entered this place of extreme anxiety. All of a sudden, I feel like there is this tension between my true self, the child, and the self that grows up into a fully fledged person. I am too scared to cross that threshold and so I sabotage anything which would take me there. I know that I can still be me and be an adult at the same time but I think that my mind has made a mental note to not even attempt to consider my life as an adult. I work 9-5 and have a 'proper' job but besides that, I don't have any sense of responsibility. I am too comfortable by myself. I don't know if my mind will change this or not. Part of me thinks, f*** it. My mind can take its time. But another part of me thinks, what if my mind realises the truth too late.
In the indie (pretentious) movie of my life which stars someone beautiful and intense like Michelle Williams, I learn how to swim. The protagonist realises that she will not ever live solely above or below the quicksand. She accepts that the quicksand is a permanent fixture in her life but she does not accept that it is unbeatable; so she learns to swim. And at the end of the film, that's the last scene.
She is swimming.
She doesn't know whether she is swimming to something good or bad but she powers through anyway. And there is no music playing in the credits. There is just the sound of the water as she cuts through it with her strong strokes. Forward, breathe, forward, breather, forward breathe. The water, fluid and powerful, is the last sound we hear before the film cuts to black and the credits finally roll.
I like this version better.
