Honestly, it took a lot of time to write this: I was often ready to give up, but to me it seemed that I actually had to finish it no matter what. Therefore, I did it, at last. Hope you enjoy.
PS: It is quite long, as you can see.
PS2: I want to point out that in this post you’ll never see the word “I” (or “me”, or “myself”), because there is no “I” in “us”.
Title: a year in the life of an average human in its middle-twenties.
1. FALL
You find yourself in a semi-unconscious status, in that situation in which you are both half-drunk and half-sober (actually you are more drunk than sober, but you, and your mind, pretend to be not). You see her walking away from you, and your world crumbles. Your imaginary world, of course. Your world made of hopes, believes, long walks near the sea, and plenty of romantic dinners. Dissolved in a few seconds. You start to blame yourself, you continue to blame yourself as you have been doing since the last time someone else dumped you.
But the semi-unconsciousness (read temporary alcohol) actually seems to be a painkiller, and a good one. Except that, you’ll pay later, and worse than before.
But as well as from the ashes the phoenix arises, the pain who doesn’t kill you, makes you a better person.
2. WINTER
Life is made of choices. Whenever you choose to be out of your comfort-zone, any choice is difficult at the beginning, it gets worse in the meanwhile, it makes you say Thank-God-It’s-Finished as soon as you are done, and it makes you say “I wish I was there again” [or “I wish I were your age again”, or “I wish I were you”, in general] for a long time after. So, when any of you make a choice, that is, for example, come here in Italy to study, or walking to a girl and talk to her, or simply choose whether you like more peanut butter or cider syrup, you are brave. Brave as you were when you did your first step, when you first told “I love you” to someone, when you tasted spinaches and said “what the hell is this sh*t”, and when you smiled to others in moments in which you’d prefer to be home crying alone.
Brave as you decided to go through difficulties, as you continued to pursue your objectives when, instead, anyone else was criticizing you; brave as you admitted your errors, emphatically as much as you didn’t indulge on pointing out someone else’s flaws.
Brave as you watched Avatar and pretend you actually liked it, brave as you keep waking up regardless any desire to sleep forever; brave as you struggle to find your place in the world.
3. SPRING
Whenever, wherever (no, notShakira’s “We're meant to be together / I'll be there and you'll be near /
And that's the deal my dear”). The birds sing a peaceful song inside their nests, the water flows graciously from the river, and the flowers grow in the most pleasant of landscapes.
And that's the deal my dear”). The birds sing a peaceful song inside their nests, the water flows graciously from the river, and the flowers grow in the most pleasant of landscapes.
But you wake up, in the dark of your room, disturbed by an obnoxious mosquito. It’s Monday, the Monday after the semi-unconsciousness. You suffer from the weekly Mondaytis, and you wish you were anywhere else but the place you are going to be (university, work, or whatever). But that’s life: a continuous act of make-believe towards yourself, towards others, towards the image reflected by the mirror. A continuous keep-on-doing-this-as-you-are-obliged-to. Any day is another Monday. The weekend? A long pre-Monday.
Heaven should have “Here we don’t have Mondays” at its entrance: I’m sure sinners would rapidly disappear.
Nevertheless, we have Mondays. And we must keep them.
SUMMER
This long monologue has a purpose: hopefully, after that, you feel rejected by life, by yourself, by Mondays; hopefully, you consider today, which is Tuesday, to be a second Monday. Hopefully, then, you feel like nothing can go worse.
Actually, life is better than that. Even though you feel rejected by that girl, even though you made choices that have been eventually proved wrong, even though every day you wake up like it is Mondays, life is better than that. Life is made of experience, and any of these events gives you a lot of it. Experience that you can use to remind yourself that any other day you’re better than the day before, that the “rejected” version of you is just a previous and outdated, forgettable, version.
So, at the end of the day, no matter how awful it was, you are still there to fight, to improve, to start over. And if you do that every single day, the next girl that dumps you is just going to be “another form of experience”, the next choice you do is going to be “the right thing to do at that time”, and the next Monday you wake up is going to be “well, that was one hell of a weekend”. In one word, awesometacular.
Unless you eat and like spinaches: in that case, you deserve a miserable life.
