Aeternus, Eternus

I am a weed in the rose garden.
I was poison in a potato leaf.
I will live, because it's hard to get rid of me.

I am a horse, I kick.
I was an ill-tempered breed.
I will live and run free.

I am a stray mongrel on the streets.
I was a scorned mixed breed.
I will live in spite of this.

I am an ordinary human being.
I was not the brilliant star they sought high in the sky.
I will live the way I like it.
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Hardly a poem. Stupid thing.

If there's one thing I want right now, anything in the world, I just want a future.

Laugh. Go ahead. *sits down and stares idly into the distance*

Hopefully you people can recover to read this part.

I want a future that I can believe in.

Believe it or not, that's harder than you think.

Some people think that a future is something you build with your own hands. I don't decry that thought. It's true. We do shape our future with our own hands.

So I bet people are thinking this: "Well then get up and do something about that future damnit!" Vulgarity is optional.

But you see, I can't believe in that future. I can't believe in what I want. I can't believe that there can be anything in that distant--or not so distant--future that I want. I am terrified that I do know what I want, because I'm not sure if I should be wanting it.

Trust me, it's a long and complicated story.

The future I see is very dark. A lot of bloodshed. A lot of tears. A lot of suffering. It's hard to place faith in a future stained by the cancer of humanity. I find it hard to believe that there can be a future.

You see, I am not a great person. I am not very altruistic. I do not see all these horrible scenes of suffering appearing in the papers everyday and think that I have to do something to change the situation. I am very selfish and self-centered.

Why do you think I have a blog anyway? Because I'm narcissistic. Silly.

So, I am not very wonderful or great or revolutionary or whatever. I am just this normal person. Although many people would beg to differ. I fail to see why I have a whole segment of people who have encountered me during some distant past of mine who seem to think that I have a great future to move on to.

For some reason they think I'm some sort of a genius. I'm not, really. I may be somewhat gifted in certain areas, but that doesn't make me a genius. I don't have the single-minded obsession or passion that characterises one, or the drive to succeed either. I am just a very normal 18 year old girl who happens to be pondering the fate of the universe.

I don't even have the spectacularly extended vocabulary that some of the more intellectual of my classmates possess. I do not have some terribly refined or left-field tastes in literature or music.

I like anime (good god, you can't get worse than liking Sailor Moon, can you?), and I like mainstream Jpop. Ask anyone, Ayumi Hamazaki, Utada Hikaru, and BoA are all very very mainstream in Jpop. I don't even go for the ultra-obscure or uber-cool "alternative music" types in the genre. I don't listen to Jrock either---although I do listen to some Gackt and Hyde sometimes.

See, I am normal. I like normal things. I like hugging fluffy teddy bears. I even like my stuffed green lizard named Chomps, which Grace was convinced that it was absolutely ugly, but bought for me for my birthday anyway because I liked it so much.

I am not a wonderful person. I don't know how to evoke great changes to the world order. I don't even know what to replace it with if I do change it. I think that's the major argument for any attempts to make serious reform. But revolutionary people around the world throughout history have gone "screw the rules, we're changing even if we don't know what's going to replace it!" And in some celebrated cases, that has proved to be the right decision.

But I'm not a hero. I'm not some great person. I do not want to be a great person. Great people have bigger problems. I am satisfied with my little problems. At least, I think I am.

I want a future that I can not be ashamed of. As it stands now, all I can see is a blank slate. Some courageous beings might see this as the perfect place to start, but I am not courageous. I have said, on many occasions before, that I am a coward. Hypothetically speaking, if there was an axe murderer standing in front of me and my friend, I would push the friend in front of me and run away.

That's right, I am a coward. I can cast away my pride to live. After all, what is pride if we die? Live, and make a difference, be it to yourself or to others.

I want to live, if only to see what happens. I would be perpetually lost, because uncertainty is less damningly rigid than certainty. Purpose and destiny is all very well and good, and I admire those who have a purpose in their lives, but I rather be lost in the wilderness trying to grope for a reason to be me and not someone else.

That's right, I don't want to be found. I like being lost. I am happy when I am sad, and sad when I am happy, because for me, both happiness and sadness are the same. I am me, whatever that means, and I want to continue being me, trying to find who who "me" is, and trying to find out more beyond "myself".

I don't want to live someone else's life, living someone else's dream, living a purpose I despise, and forgetting what it means to doubt and to learn.

I sometimes like to think, and then to doubt. Doubt opens possibilities, doorways to other possibilities, and we can learn new things. Doubt is uncertain, unsafe, and even terrifying. People don't like doubt. They want certainty.

Truth is, I'm afraid of doubt too. I don't like standing on this floating ice of doubt, drifting across uncharted waters and wondering when the ice beneath my feet will just melt and give way under my feet. Doubt adds fuel to fear.

But then, certainty is boring. It is very admirable. But it is also staid and safe and consumes all your life and attention. You can be happy with certainty. I won't begrude those who find joy in certainty. I would like some certainty in this inconstant life too, but I know that I would be bored to death by it.

Perhaps, if my mind hadn't awakened to possibility, I would have lived a life of certainty. I would be the straight-A student, probably graduating with a double degree with honors at some prestigious university. I would be great, successful, and probably happy with what I was.

But somewhere along the way my life took a turn. Certainty gave way to doubt. I learnt to think and to question. Why am I here? Why are we like this? Why is the world like this? Why am I me? What does being "me" mean? Does there have to be a meaning to "me"? If there is, what do I mean? Does there have to be a meaning? Who am I? What am I? What does it mean to be me?

Many questions. I had never thought to ask them before. But that divergence happened, and here I am, questioning. Doubting. Above all, thinking.

I like thinking, even though sometimes it does hinder action. Thinking is fun. Thinking helps me to understand. Thinking is the only thing keeping me sane.

It's too late to go back to that unthinking certainty anymore. I can't go back even if I wanted to, and now that I have had time to seriously think about it, I don't want to go back either. I would probably have been happier with that sense of purpose I possessed then, that unswerving certainty that I would go through school and life as that brilliant shooting star that aced everything. I would probably have ended up married somehow, and have kids. And then I would grow old and fufilled, and die at the end of my days, unquestioning.

I would have been happy.

But that's a dream. A dream I can't go back to. And a dream I'm pretty sure I don't want, now that I am cast out into this world of uncertainty.

Everything is fresh and new, being uncertain. I live from moment to moment, half in fear, half in wonder, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing in the midst of the wilderness. Trying to be me, yet not knowing who or what "me" represents.

I disappointed a lot of people being like that. Wandering through my life, aimlessly, without purpose. I hear them sigh and shake their heads.

What a waste, they say. She would have been a wonderful student, have had a wonderful future, the world at her feet. She would have been great, they lamented, and now she's just throwing it all away by being lazy and irresponsible.

Yes it's true. I am being lazy and irresponsible. By typing this at all, I am already being terribly lazy and irresponsible. Reality, as it has a habit of doing, intrudes once again into the world of the mind. The world doesn't wait for one single girl to figure out who she is and what she wants from life, it just keeps going.

Life is full of possibilities. I keep drifting like a cloud, bornt aloft by the winds. Aimlessly, wandering, without purpose. People would think I require a good kick in the head to "wake me up".

But they're wrong. I am awake. I know full well that my drifting would get me in trouble. That I'm head-on for a collision course. That I would get hurt, and hurt others because of this stubborn recklessness of mine. But I still drift, I still wander, I still wonder.

Because I am terribly selfish. I don't care for others but myself. I drift because I want to, because I hope that, in drifting, I can find out what it means to be me, and that in drifting along, I can pick out useful information along the way to feed the artistic hunger within myself. I am selfish. I only thought about myself.

Because certainty, for me, is so much scarier than doubt. Certainty means that I will be tied down, would meant that I had to *gasp* bear responsibility. I'm lazy, selfish, and irresponsible. What do you think?

Certainty might make one feel safe, but it fills me with dread. Last night I asked for a hug from my father, and I received it. It was cold, clammy, and distant. It didn't feel safe at all. I felt even less secure in the fact that my father's embrace made me feel even more uneasy. If this is what certainty proved to me, I rather that I had never requested for the hug, forever remained in doubt, and at least could bear the illusion that the hug would have been a comforting one.

Doubt gives possibility. I am a coward too, and certainty is far more dangerous to my wandering mind than anything else.

In this life I have left, I doubt that I would ever get married. I would probably remain celibate unless I get horribly horribly drunk and lose control of my senses. I'd be a wanderer in my own mind, endlessly exploring, but never trying it out in real life, because in the end, I'm nothing but a spineless coward, with nothing to fight for because I didn't dare to specify the thing I wanted to fight for.

Terrible fate, isn't it? And you wonder why I can't believe in a future with me in it.