Nothing at 22

Sometimes, I feel like I write for my own future reference. As if one day I’ll wake up desperately needing to refer back to my thoughts as a 22-year-old.

I feel like Anna Kendrick in the movie ‘Get a Job’, “I'm 22 years old and I have no idea what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.”

I feel like Taylor Swift in her song ‘Nothing New.’

“How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22?”

I haven’t the slightest idea.

I have visions that I hope for, but nothing is certain.

I spend my days waking up when I feel like it, and most of the time I am alone. I sort of prefer it this way though because it gives me some time and space to think.

I go on a lot of walks, and it’s on these walks that I do most of my thinking.

What I want though, is to be somewhere else. Preferably very far away. Sometimes I feel like I am somewhere else, and that somewhere else is very far away.

It’s not like I want to escape from anything, I would just like to see everything. Run in a big open field of grass and wildflowers with mountains covered in all different shades of green surrounding me.

I do feel free, but also like that freedom is weighing on me. I can feel it slowly slipping, and I know I need to change something.

So I’ve been writing every day for the past five days.

When I write I don’t want to talk about the past and I don’t want to talk about the future.

When I write I want to talk about right now.

Right now I am 22 and sitting at a park bench trying to make sense of what I’m supposed to do next.

I want to feel a purpose for writing something down. When I do have something to say, I want to prioritize that thought and get it down on paper.

I want to write something meaningful.

Something that matters. Something of impact.

Something like Lana Del Rey’s ‘Kintsugi’.

I always feel like I have to try and find the right thing to say. Or only talk about things that I’m positive, or at least confident, other people will want to talk about.

Sometimes, I feel like a big question mark walking.

But honestly, that sometimes part should be emphasized.

Other times, I feel like I have all the answers That I always have and that I always will.

Anything that I need to know, I already do.

Anything that I will become, I already am.

It usually happens when I’m on a walk and not wearing any headphones. Just listening to the world around me.

I have all the answers when I’m in the present moment. Almost as if for the first time, I’m conscious of the fact that I have a subconscious.

Conscious of the fact that I haven’t always been.

Conscious of a lot of things that have been so in my face and still, I’ve yet to realize were there.

Questions start to arise that I feel aren’t even mine to ask. I don’t even feel like I’m the one who came up with them.

Were we all dormant like a sleeping volcano before we were born?

Why did we decide to come here, to Earth? Did we get to decide?

What is the point of life? Is there even a point at all?

A lot more often than I would like to admit, I find my mind asking “Why did we come back?”

I find my mind in constant contemplation of life.

There is a famous quote that reminds me of this.

“Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up… Now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.” ~ Alan Watts

Why did we wake back up?

Why did we come back?

To which my subconscious involuntarily replies…

because you always will.