I wanna grow backwards

shhhhh. It doesn’t matter. 

Honey we live on a flying rock. I don’t give a pizza what the girls from the other class said about you and how you have no idea what you want to do when you’re older. You will die. I will die. And those girls will die after forgetting who you are. 

I feel we live in our heads most of the time and we make up all these crazy scenarios. I was guilty of it. And maybe sometimes I tend to fall back to those tendencies. But really. Victim mndset is so last season and I am done feeling so pathetic and helpless and whydidthishappentome and thisisalltheirfault. 

I wanna age backwards. I want to be a child again. I rocked as a kid! I wore bright pink shirts with jeans skirts with ruffles and green/yellow/white shoes while rocking my 5kg worth of academic stuff in my bag that had wheels. And I played tag fearlessly, I pretended I was throwing fireballs at my friend in the middle of the courtyard. And no one judge me. Probably because they were busy throwing back ice attacks. We rocked! 

I grew up not knowing anything. I remember discovering things slowly. Like not everyone also got first place in exams. And that no, despite my horror, God didn’t want to kill us ( will take too long to explain and i am writing this at night. I have school tomorrow ) I also remember stumbling on a conversation about android and iphone and i didn’t know what that meant. I only knew that phones were the things pressed on my ears by my parents while I had to say hello to an aunt that I didn’t know the name of and sincerely hoped she wouldn’t ask ‘ do you remember me honey ? ‘ cuz I never did. I always said the bare minimum before going back to playing with the plastic bag stuffed with papers and pretended I was a football player. While trying to not knowk down the lights in the process.

But I also remember some not cool things such as showing up one year and seeing an old male friend in the courtyard. I was going up to say hi when I noticed that the girls were separate from the boys. It was the start of those insecurities building up. I remember girls becoming too timid to talk to their crushes but somehow did have the audacity to ask my 8 year old a*s to write them letters in their stead ( I rocked at french ). And the biggest of all, not everyone had an either school/ home schedule. Boys could go out and play, girls could go out and play. And I only realised that when a classmate made a remark about how he went out to buy juice from the grocery store. THE GROCERY STORE. AT NIGHT. ALONE. That was as unbelievable for me back then as people walking on their hands while sipping on perfume. 

The point is : We rocked as a kid. We didn’t give two bananas if the colour of our shoes matched our shirt or if we were being too loud or if our crush noticed us staring at him and if it was what made his friends laugh. We were living life as everyone should. Freely, ambitiously and in the present. No worries about what career path to choose or what’s going to comu up in the next physics exam. Wedding’t care. And I am learning all over again ho to not give a carein the world.

I realized as I got older and older that the world had problems. Ones that didn’t make sense to me but may have to other nationalities or cultures. I mean, Islamophobia? Racism? Misoginy? Da hell is that?!

I grew up in tunisia. A muslim country in north africa and the poeple weren’t ( at least to my perspective ) so hung up on formalities. I grew up between gorgeous hijabis and gorgeous silky hair women. People were beautiful no matter what was their skin colour or their shape and size ( it only mattered if they gave me candy and compliments on how pretty I was ) and girls and boys played together as long as they didn’t fight over who had to count to ten. 

The fact that people were treated differently because of their gender, skin colour or faith was RIDICULOUS. i’ll say it again. IT IS RIDICULOUS TO DIFFIRENCIATE BETWEEN POEPLE. Gee it was so messed up that I spent years before grasping the concept. Sometimes, I wonder what happened. Why did we stop playing? Why didn’t we stay children? Carefree and happy. 

I purchased a copy of romeo and juliette once that I didn’t read because it made my head hurt. But I liked the man. I liked the quotes I heard and it was enough to make me purchase his book. My favourite is something like:

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Poetic, but not quite true. In my opinion of course. Don’t you begin criticizing my a*s over this I mentioned that I wasn’t a shakespearean before. Anyway. I believe that when we forget who we are, who we truly are, we become those soulless creatures who only follow what they’re told is the norm. Devils, robots who choose to just ‘gotoschoolanduniversityandgetajobandfondafamily’ which is totally fine if that’s TRULY what you desire. 

I dream of a free world. No, i’m not talking about America. I mean a world where anyone is able to REALLY BE THEMSELVES WITH NO JUDGMENT. I like learning. I don’t enjoy school. I love the feeling of discovering new facts. I despise having a set schedule for each course. Wouldn’t it be so awesome to study what we want? What we truly want and not what is available to us. I have no idea what’s the school like outside, but here we have set courses for each section. I am currently in science ( and if it’s still as boring that fact may change ) and we have things we have to study. But i don’t wannaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. It’s ( again, from my perspective ) SOOOOOO BORIIIIIIIIIING. I love plants. I don’t wanna know what chromosomes are made of. I want four hours of philosophy instead of 1. I want astronomy and russian and cinematography. I want to learn sewing and CPR. I want to know how to make my own fridge and how many types of screws I can name in one breath. I want freedom. Freedom of choice, expression, thought, style and time management. I crave it. I feel it. Yet, as most, I don’t do anything about it. Sometimes I cry, I get the motivation then those around me grind me back. It’s me. I am the only one who can put me out of my misery and give me what I want. 

Whan you think about it, you actually can do everything you desire. Nothing is literally forcing me to go to school. Hell, my dad told me he’d buy me cows if I wanted to drop out. But it’s more of a psychological problem nowadays. Social pressure and the fact that we have np idea what lies ahead keep us stuck. Ignorance and fear have always proven to be besties in almost every problems we face. Yet how many of us dare brave it. I am not allowed to go out, although I managed to negotiate me staying at home at chosen times. Bur instead of being like I don’t feel like going to math class, I’ll be downtown in a cultural coffee writing books I am like Did the teacher really say we had to do the whole page? Not just the fourth exercise? S**t gimmi your copy!

Is it right just because it pleases everyone else.

Is it all right to forget who I truly am in trade of a secure future?

I’ll answer that one babe. IT IS EFFING NOT. NOT IN A MILLION YEARS HONEY. 

I think we become truly aware of our lives and ourselves when we discover that our ‘parents’ don’t have anything more figured out as us. In fact, we may be closer to happiness than they ever were. 

I may not bbe ready. But I am doing it anyway. I am taking those scary leaps. I am making those big decisions after nervous breakdowns in physics class ( which is how this came to life ). And I’ll do it scared while peeing my pants because what truly terrifies me isn’t death, debt or disappointing my grandma. It’s looking out my window one day, and feeling in my deep core a consuming regret. Regret of not following my dreams. Of not trying out a relationship or a friendship. Of not following my heart, soul and highest self and whoosing what everyone else does. 

That is chilling scary. 

That is awful. 

And that is the promise I am striving forward. 

This is a prep talk for me. But if you felt it helped you in any way, then maybe, just maybe, I am on the right path.