Extra-terrestial

“ What you’re doing doesn’t fit into society. I just don’t want you to get hurt. ”

Packing my bags to go off to a developing country and rushing off after every major exam, and letting go of certain things I -really- ache to do here. How do I tell you it hurts, in a teenage kind of way; I’ve made my choice about sharing my experience with clinical depression and anorexia openly to reach out to people, and getting this second book published. How do I tell you that the choice has been met with resistance, and that it was a hard one to make. I’ve had a distant relative tell me I’m too naïve, it’s never going to happen, it’s not as if the world’s going to change, and what on earth happened that made me turn out this way in an entire lineage of decent, conformist, self-respecting people in our extended family tree- She told me, shaking her head, “ What you’re doing doesn’t fit into society. I just don’t want you to get hurt. ” I saw how embarrassed you were, embarrassed with me. I thought I was being brave, you thought it was mild stupidity.

Why don’t I fit in, you asked me. Why don’t I just –try- and fit in, the way everybody else does.

Some days I want to go out in a micro-skirt, illegally short, trashy fish-nets and killer heels and club till the morning, drink myself dead drunk and chain-smoke a pack. Some days I want to follow how I feel, dive into the sugar-rush of heady flings, get attached, and dump the deluded bastard. Some days all I want to do is to take the whole holiday off and go holidaying with a group of friends in Europe instead of breathing fumes in a third-world city. Some days, I just want to be young, just like everybody else. Decadent, unthinking, emotional. With cheap make-up and free alcohol, wasted time and disposable relationships.

But I don't. Not because I'm scared, or trapped. I don't because it's a choice made after weighing and struggling, and sometimes it's hard, but it's also not. How do I begin to explain it.

People tell me I’m older than my age. And some tell me my heart is so young like a little child's. Some days, I wonder: where did all that youth go? Have I redefined youth? I wonder whether I grew up too fast, too soon, as if I’d lived through life a million times and chosen the wiser path. Or not.

Or whether I grew up at all. Maybe I grew up till I was twelve, and just… stopped.

There's a price to pay for doing what you think is right, especially if it's non-conformist and goes against your primal instincts. Sometimes choices are hard, but they're also not. Painful, but liberating, too.

Some days, I feel like a fish swimming in the wrong direction. Somedays, I feel like I’m running alone, against the crowd, like a sharp splinter against the grain of wood.

Some days, why do I feel I don’t belong.