Logicless Logic

moving on.

People usually approach their 21st birthday in eager anticipation, for then they inherit their key to freedom. Adulthood. Technicalities. Free of any movie rating restrictions, to smoke, to drink without having to answer to anyone. Even though most will already have been doing the abovementioned for some years, the freedom of adulthood is understandably a joyous occasion to most people.

Unlike most people of this generation, I approach my 21st with a slightly sinking feeling. A heavy heart, so to speak. Somehow, I feel that the symbolic 21st does not feel that much different from the previous 20 birthdays. Yet, once you hit adulthood, there is the added responsibility. That's probably where the sullenness comes from. A fully grown adult with no income and living off his parents. It's probably a sense of unachievement, added to the feeling of powerlessness, just hanging in the limbo.

21 is an in-between age. The age where according to numbers, you've grown up, but in your heart, you're still struggling to adapt to the brave, idealistic new world of adulthood. You suddenly realise that with the freedom, comes the heavy weight of added pressure on your shoulders. At 21, a person is given a pair of wings to soar in the skies. But added to that pair of wings are a pair of iron shackles around the ankles. The wings are reduced from an object of freedom to mere display pieces(unless of course they are strong enough).

My 21st this year will also be spent in a new house, 2 bus stops down the road. I move in on my birthday(which makes it sort of symbolic), leaving the home where I spent 12 years of my life in. It might not seem much, but seeing as 12 is more than half of 21, it is for me, more than half my life. It is also where I have lived since "senior childhood", the age of 9. As such, I hold more memories of growing up here than anywhere else I have lived in. This is the place where I moved in as a curious, overweight kid, and am now moving out as a merely overweight adult. The tumultous(a gross exaggeration) years in between have all been spent in this little condominium unit, kept as tidy as possible(imagine living with 3 destructive young humans) by my mother and grandmother. Every scratch on the marble floor, a nick on the door, a hole in the wall, the numerous doodles and scribbles on the wall, is a story of my childhood, a feature film in their own right(in my eyes only). When the new owners of the flat move in, a fresh coat of paint will cover the story of my childhood, leaving it just under the surface of a thin, yet suffocating coat,never found on the face of this world again.

Tomorrow, I'll walk out of this unit for the last time and leave for camp. When it's time to go home, I'll go home to a brand new(to me) place, where I start my adult life. This time, when I move away, I don't just move away. I also have to move on.

justin.

posted by justin @ 9:47 PM