Saturday, December 6, 2014

Gather ye rosebuds.

Sometimes I lose track of how many years it’s been -- but it’s only been four years. I graduated university in 2011, but my mother passed away just before that in 2010. It’s hard to believe it hasn't been an eternity since she was here.


My hope was that, every year, when I write an entry on December 6, I would find myself a little more grown up and a little wiser. Perhaps with some interesting anecdotes or enlightening experiences to share. Or maybe someday, I would be happy or busy enough with my life that I don’t need to write something like this. Instead, I just find myself feeling the same -- sometimes happy, sometimes sad -- just one year later, typing away at the screen.

Maybe it’s still too early. I still cry sometimes, when I’m alone. I see children with their parents, and I tear up. I watch movies with people at the hospital, and I want to cry. I listen to my friends talk about their parents, and I feel genuinely happy for them -- but also an uncontrollable pang of sadness. I have a really good day -- then I pick up her picture when I get home and cry because I wish my mother could see me now. Or better yet, I wish I could have given her some of my time.

I always think that I need twice the amount of energy, twice the amount of experience, and twice the amount of fulfillment in my life, to make up for the life lost that should have been my mother’s. I should be writing the book I’ve always wanted to, I should be becoming someone famous, or I should at least be making my way to "the top" as an ambitious career woman. But I’m not, and at most I guess I’m just a normal 25-year-old who doesn't know what to do with her normal life.

I don’t want to be normal. Being average is one of my worst fears. Born in an average family, go to an average school, get average grades and make average friends, get an average job, live an average lifespan -- and die. It sounds so futile and so terrible to me.

But I know already, I know, my family is not an average family. My mother was not an average person. My grandparents didn’t raise me in an average way -- they raised me with immeasurable love. 

And this is the frustrating part for me. How can I show, with my life, that all of this is not average? How can I turn the trivial thing that is my life, into something that isn’t fruitless? I don’t want a lot of money or luxury, or unnecessary fame. I just want to feel like I’m glad to be alive, and when I die, to feel glad to have lived.

I want to become the positive existence that I pretend to be. But, I also want to stay my sad self when I'm by myself, because I feel that if I cease to be sad it would mean forgetting my mom.

I just want her to be alive. But she's not, and I am.

What am I to do?



Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

No comments:

Post a Comment