“The tension you find between the everyday treadmill and the gilded promises of life”

People think a lot about the “gilded promises of life”. If we didn’t then I wonder if we would find it difficult to keep the motivation to live through every day life. Gilded promises are the reason that people want to keep on living because without them life is just one endless jog on the treadmill. A seemingly endless journey with no definitive destination and ample time to develop the tendency of wondering “why would I bother?”. Who would want that?

I don’t know about other people but for me, being on a treadmill is an extremely stress inducing situation and it isn’t particularly enjoyable, but I know that the lasting benefits it will do for my physical and mental health will be worth the extreme pain that it causes me. So in a way the title of this essay is the perfect metaphor for life. I have sat in school for the past 14 years (this is my idea of the treadmill) to hopefully be one step closer to realising my dream of doing law and being able to afford a desirable life for my family (gilded promise). I go through the pain and suffering of exercise and diet (treadmill) to be able to enjoy myself in a bikini on the beach during the summer (gilded promise). I attend karate classes three times a week, train endlessly and exhaustingly (treadmill) in the hopes that one day the training will pay off and I’ll be a black belt (gilded promise). The majority of things that people do in their every day lives are aiming towards these “gilded promises”, we chase the idea of a happy and fulfilled life that we hope we will one day be able to lead. We assume that there must be more to life than just your every day slog on the treadmill, the tedious journey that it is, and we wait patiently for these gilded promises to materialise.

As Richard Dawkins once explained, our universe has “precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no good, no evil, nothing but pitiless indifference”. This suggests that human life – which is after all, part of the universe – must be pointless too. So one would be led to ask the question, what reason is there really for any of us to be here? Not to sound wretchedly philosophical but, what is the point? What gilded promises are out there for us that make our lives worth living?

I posed this question to my father recently and he gave me two answers. One, was to thrust the idea of living in an apartment overlooking Central Park, making beautiful memories with my three fantastic children and having an intellectually simulating job, so that I didn’t turn into a brain dead trophy-wife. Eating delicious food in up market restaurants, travelling the world to see life from different peoples perspectives (not just a middle class Dubliners) and being able to afford to lie on the beach all day in Barcelona, smoking a cigarette whilst chatting to a new stranger every day. He knows this is what I dream about and I can’t really deny that he presents a good argument, but nonetheless it wasn’t good enough for me, I needed something more definitive, more persuasive.

The second being a two part answer in itself. He flung a magazine entitled “The Intelligent Life” at me, a branch of The Economist. Within this magazine, he told me, were the two most important answers my question could have. The first, an article called “The Perfect boot”. This article he said, would change the way I look at the average boot and give me the motivation to go looking for my own perfect boot. This, was of course a comedic answer, intended to snap me out of my permanently negative view of life, for a moment.  My father being the closeted gay I know him to be, well I hypothesise about this privately due to his love of taking me clothes shopping and his love of interior design (I, of course, choose to ignore that he has been happily married for 25 years to my mother whom he has four children with) thought that this would be the perfect answer.

The second being the (usefully) entitled segment, “What is the point?”. It comprised of a multitude of smaller articles from a variety of different authors, poets and philosophers giving their opinions on the point of life. It contained many, very interesting views, about life and about the merits of living. What washed over me, when I was finished reading the article, was the realisation that this anxiety and frustration that I have with trying to understand the meaning of life is simply tension that builds and builds every day. Sometimes you forget that there are so many things to look forward to in life that it causes you slight paralysis before you use your aspirations and desires to propel you into motion again.

See the issue that I struggle with most is this: really, when it comes down to it, there is no destination, just an uphill struggle to find the one thing that people want the most, happiness. Sweet serenity is all I’m looking for in life, complete and utter peace of mind. The thing is, that I know this is too much to ask for. The majority of everyone’s life, not just my own, will inevitably be spent working and having to deal with the monotony of daily life, just for a glimpse every so often of a gilded promise to keep me motivated for a few more years.

I know it sounds like a typical, teenage argument to be calling on issues with family as a tension that I find in my every day life but it’s something that I struggle a lot with. I get on with them well for periods of time. I go through phases of getting on with them like a house on fire and I always know that they are good people but  The tension rises in me and I simply feel bogged down by everything. I go into these mental states of being desperately unhappy, unable to escape my own mental cage of self imposed isolation and sadness. However, when I finally stop crying, and take a second to rationally think about things, I understand what they’re trying to do. I know they’re being supportive in many other ways and I haven’t always repaid them duly. I look to the future and hope that one day I can make them proud of me, hope that I can do what they want and make sure our relationship is steadier. This is a gilded promise I have given myself to make living with them at the moment bearable. It’s almost like the drudgery that I deal with on the treadmill, that I feel most of the time, is not so bad because I have this image in my head of doing them proud and being happy in myself because of it

I like to think that I just haven’t found my true calling in life, this is my excuse for why I’m so determined to be negative. I know I’m being a bit dramatic, I think people tend to luxuriate in their own sadness and absorb it into being part of their identity. I know that there are many gilded promises ahead in my life and a time will come where my teenage dramatics will no longer prevail. It is the memories and small moments of joy and happiness, the momentary internal peace and satisfaction of achievement and the small progressions toward this imaginary destination that really matters to make life worth it. At the end of the day, there is a huge amount of tension between the two. I battle with my demons to convince myself that the treadmill is worth the gilded promises as I’m sure many others do. But tension is a natural part of living, you get nothing without paying a price for it, you’re not going to get any gilded promise without the treadmill. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to see past the near future and the end of your own nose, but when you finally open your eyes and see that glorious ray of sunshine, of hope, of motivation to do better, that’s a little gilded success all on its own.

“I tune into conversations around me”

Sitting in my room I don’t know where to go or what to do. I’m paralysed from the brain down with uncertainty. My mind is working over time trying to make sense of everything that I’m thinking. Everything is being thought at the same time. I don’t know how to sort through it. Come on V pull yourself together, you can do this. Breathe, breathe, calm down.

I’m sitting rigidly at my desk. Staring vacantly, straight forward, out my second floor bedroom window onto the street below. My long white nightie flows to the floor, it was my grandmothers and I find it soothing to wear. It covers every inch of my skin and makes me feel like The Ghost of Christmas Past. My jet black hair falls straight to my shoulders, ghostly pale skin and deep red lips, slightly parted, make me seem older and more mature than my age. My feet are flat on the floor of my chaotic and disorganised bedroom. My hands are placed lightly on my thighs in what proves to be an awkward position, palms facing down, elbows tucked in tightly.

The wind is howling, the moon giving everything on my road an eery glow. My mother is yelling at one of my five sisters downstairs for not practicing her piano “Alexandra what is wrong with you, I ask you every day to practice the bloody piano and you just won’t do it! You’re 13 years old, I’m sick to death of this”. I can hear it from my room, the awkwardness that ensues a scolding. My father is trying to peacefully read the paper after a long day at work as always but he too gets involved when the twins are playing on their iPhones instead of doing homework, “Serena! Naomi! You have the junior cert this year and you have the nerve to be playing on your phones in front of me?! I work day and night to pay for your education and you repay me by doing absolutely nothing”.

There is it, the guilt card once again. When I was their age I got the exact same speech every time a report card came home. They’re 3 years younger than me but I feel their pain. I’m just hoping that they grow out of it, for their own sake. I never did and I’m paying the price now.

They nag and they nag and they nag, I can never escape their constant nagging. They come up to my bedroom and they yell at me about the state that it’s in, about how terrible my grades are, about how I’m never going to get into college if I keep going the way I am. I shut my brain down and attempt to ignore them. I hear them in the distance, as if through a tunnel “Vera you’re so intelligent, we’re just trying to help you make the most out of it. Please baby, we’re not trying to upset you we just want what’s best for you”. I don’t care what they have to say. I want them to go away. Their voices get quieter and quieter the more I concentrate on drowning them out.

After they leave, I can feel a slow tear trickle down the side of my face. I don’t really know where it’s coming from but as soon as I feel it, it unleashes a torrent of sadness. A feeling of overwhelming pressure sitting on my shoulders and chest. I don’t really want to deal with any of this pressure do I? I’m not really bothered am I? I can’t really do this can I?

I climb onto my bed. I sit at the edge with a blanket wrapped tightly around me, my back leaning against the wall of my bedroom with a poster that says “Keep Calm and Carry on”. I cry. I’m not altogether certain why I’m crying. Am I crying because my boyfriend left me and it’s knocked my self confidence? Am I crying because I don’t know how to tell my parents that I don’t want to go to college? Am I crying because I can’t stand the stress of school and I feel weak and worthless because of it? Weak because I can’t achieve what my upperclass parents wish of me. Weak because I don’t know why everyone around me seems to be dealing with life fine and I’m not. Weak because I’m conforming to the stereotypical teenagery, hormone fuelled, tragic image that I tried so hard not to become. So many reasons swirling around in my confused head and I don’t know what to think, whether I should block it out or attempt to deal with the root cause.

I sit there sit, hugging my legs tight to my chest. A feeling of numbness washing over me. I cry silently for half an hour until I decide I’ve had enough. I unwrap the blanket from around my bony shoulders. I slide swiftly underneath my duvet, my head hits the pillow with a soft thud. I fall asleep quickly and deeply, happy to feel nothing for once. Happy that for eight hours I don’t have to deal with anything.

*
I wake up the next morning, my eyes tight and puffy from falling asleep with half formed tears. I roll out of bed with the look of a disgruntled and bored teenager, which I am, and move silently to get a towel before getting into the shower. I don’t make any noise.

I pass my sister, Eliza in the hallway, ” morning Vera, have a good day at school”. Ugh she knows I hate when people call me Vera, such a ridiculously pompous name that only works in Italy, “I won’t but thanks”. Eliza is a well to do, sociable and chatty girl, studying medicine. Everyone in school thinks that I’m just like her, that I’ll end up in a high paying and respectable job. They think this way purely because of the face that I put on in school, the person that I want everyone to think that I am shines brightly. People underestimate how good an actress I really am. My ex-boyfriend loved my happy self, and I loved that happy self aswell. I was confident, I thought I had stayed my usual stubborn and “in control” self, the one calling the shots. After he ended it, I realised that I was the one starting to fall for him, and that’s a horrible feeling. The realisation that you’re not as strong and independent as you really want to believe you are is a harsh, tumbling fall back down to reality. You question different aspects of your own personality because when you’re not in that position you have all the answers, I have no problem giving advice to other people but I never use it myself. That’s a stupid irony of life really isn’t it? You try so hard to make it work, to be this perfect person, and it’s not necessary, you don’t need to pretend to be anything you aren’t because there’s seven billion people in this world. One of them is bound to love you right?

I stand in the shower with the warm water cascading down my back. I face the wall and I breathe deeply in and out. Ok V, it’s a new day, put your happy face on, go out there and do what you have to do to keep people fooled.

I walk downstairs. “Morning” I mutter to my busy family. “Jennifer that’s a nice necklace! Oh wait that’s right I like it so much because it’s mine!”.
“Oh come on V just let me wear it today it goes with my outfit”.
“Naomi coffee or tea?”
“Alexandra do you have your ballet shoes, you have ballet on Saturdays right?”

It’s the usual chatter of a functional family. Maybe we are a functional family and it’s just me that doesn’t belong. Maybe I’m the dysfunctional one.

I obediently eat my porridge, I don’t have the heart to tell my earnest sister Jennifer that I think it’s absolutely disgusting. I brush my silky hair, put on my coat, grab my lunch that my mother has made for me and I walk gingerly out the door, muttering over my shoulder that I won’t be too late home.

Avery and Noah are meeting me in town. They will, as usual, have told all of our other friends to meet us there aswell. This suits me fine. I don’t want to have to ask all of these people to come, the stress involved I could care less for, dealing with all of their “what time?”, “who’s going to be there?” and “where exactly are we meeting?”s bore me. Yet I enjoy it when more people are there, to observe how people around me are interacting is, to me, endlessly enthralling.

I arrive in early, as I always do to sit outside George’s Arcade. My usual bench is always free, I sit opposite to the entrance so as to see the throngs of unusual people wandering in and out. I have given myself an extra 20 minutes on top of the time I have told Avery and Noah I’m going to be there. This way I can smoke my usual two cigarettes while watching fascinating people covered in tattoos wearing their bizarre clothes and eating their frozen yoghurt file passed me.

I tune into the conversations around me because I love to hear how other people lives compare to mine. This place is oddly private to me, although it is, obviously, completely public, there is something uniquely personal about it, I feel comfortable here. No one knows who I am so I can listen in on what people are saying yet I don’t look like a complete oddball eavesdropping on coffee dates.

“Excuse me”

“Aaaaah” I nearly swallow my cigarette in shock. I was so wrapped up in thought, I failed to notice the guy walking up beside me. He was bent over me now, an inquisitive and curious look on his face.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to frighten you”, he said with a slight snigger, “I was just wondering if you had a lighter I could borrow”.

He was beautiful. I couldn’t deny it, he was beautiful. He stared at me with these deep brown eyes. My mother always told me not to trust a man with brown eyes but he’s intriguing. He seems to be staring into my soul. I need to regain my composure for a moment before I can begin to speak.

“Ehm… Yeah… hold on a sec, I’ll get it for you”

“That’s ok take your time”, he sits down beside me. This is not the usual move of a person looking for a lighter. Normally, they take it and quickly attempt to move on before engaging in much conversation. This is strange. I don’t know if I’m uncomfortable. I cross my legs tighter across each other and feel my body becoming rigid. I’m rummaging in my massive bag, this is the one time that I regret having my life in my bag.

“I’m Brody by the way”

I look up at him through my hair, why is this stranger trying to make conversation? “It’s nice to meet you Brody, I’m V”

“That’s interesting, I know very few people who have a letter as a name”. I look back at him vacantly. “I’m sorry that was a terrible attempt at a joke” he continues bashfully.

“You’re right that was terrible. Well it’s actually Vera but I can’t stand that my mother was stupid enough to call me that, so I stick with V”

” Haha I like it, it’s unusual. I wish I had a cooler name but Brody’s not too bad”

He’s lit his cigarette and is still sitting there, I cross my legs under me and light my second. We both stare forward, looking in on what’s happening inside. Men with buns in their hair buy earrings, teenage girls who think they’re hipster pretend to be interested in the crazy fashion they know they’d never dare attempt to pull off and a group of skinny boys wearing over sized clothes, they look ridiculous in, buy dungarees. I momentarily forget that he’s there beside me. If I was with anyone else I’d feel uncomfortable but I like that he understands not to speak while I’m paying attention. It’s not an awkward silence.

I take a deep breath and don’t dare to look over at him. He’s staring at me I can’t feel it, the look of curiosity has returned to his chiselled face and is burning into the side of mine. I glance over at him and soak in how handsome he actually is, dark brown hair the perfect length, deeply tanned with perfectly smooth skin and luscious lips.

“I’m sorry if I’m intruding on your thoughts, you’re a fascinating person to watch think.”

“Well that’s incredibly creepy but no you’re not intruding. I come here all the time, I can’t stand being at home with no social interaction but hate actual social interaction at the same time. So here is a happy medium for me”

“You hate social interaction?”

“Well I hate all the annoying extras that come with having friendships, I love learning how people tick and what makes different people happy or sad but I don’t really care for maintaining a relationship after that.”

I look over at him embarrassed that I’ve let such a personal thought come out so easily.

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right people. People worth the effort.”

“Well that’s not fair because I love my friends, I find them fascinating but whether or not I have an emotional attachment to them is a different question. That’s not to say it’s just my friends, I just don’t have an emotional attachment to anything.”

I look over at him with a slight smile on my lips, hoping he doesn’t think I’m a psycho. I don’t know why I’m opening up to this stranger but I like him. It’s comforting to have someone who doesn’t think I’m crazy, who doesn’t think I’m wildly abnormal for thinking the way I do.

“Aah I see, so people are really just projects for you to watch in weird sort of social experiments? Then you get bored and move on? I’ve never heard someone describe their friends as fascinating before”

I had never looked at it that way. I knew he was joking but he had struck a chord.

“Well I wouldn’t say that, I just try to not feel anything for people because when I do, I get attached and then I’m weak for putting myself in that position. You put your heart on your sleeve for people and they kick you in the face in return”

” It doesn’t stop me from doing it though. The moments of happiness outweigh the moments of pain, even if the happiness is three seconds and the pain is three months. Your negativity is oddly adorable, you’re like a child trying to rebel against their parents. You don’t really hate them but you want to hate them so you pretend that you do”

” I’m not rebelling, I just don’t want to deal with society’s bullshit when I don’t see the point. Life’s not all that great so why bother with it? All that happens is that you end up in a hole somewhere in a slightly bigger body than you started off with but other than that what? Realistically you’re not going to have made much more of a lasting impact on the world in 80 years than you would in 17. So why not just end it now?

“There’s so much more to life than to make some profound impact on the world as a whole.” He stares philosophically across the street, takes a drag and continues “What about the impact you make on your family? What about the impact you made on the day of that homeless man I saw you give a cup of tea to? What about the impact that you make on the average day of a handsome stranger? Maybe your negativity is what’s holding you back. You’re not a bad person, you don’t have a bad life, you just don’t give it a chance, you won’t let anyone surprise you because you think you know it all, you think you’ve figured out humanity and you haven’t, you’ve just put your own spin on it”

“Life’s just a game like any other, and I’m not interested in playing. I don’t think I have it all sorted out I just don’t see the point”

” But most people don’t need to have a point to live, they use the gilded promises of life to propel themselves on the every day treadmill, never actually being promised anything. They just hope that tomorrow will be better and when they can squeeze a bit of happiness out of that day, that’s a little gilded success all on its own”

“I’m a normal person, just like everyone else in the world I put on my face and I do what society has laid out for me to do. (There’s a joining sentence here but I can’t figure out what it is) It just annoys me that I don’t have my own free will”

“Don’t be ridiculous of course you have your own free will, no one forces you to do anything”

“No because if I did I would have chosen not to be here a long time ago. I play the game that someone has laid out for me, just like the billions of people who have walked the earth before me, because that’s what I’ve been told I have to do, not because I see any real purpose in doing so.”

“Wow we’re very cheerful aren’t we”

“Haha I’m sorry, this is what this bench does to me. I can’t control my slightly deranged thoughts. I’m not usually this depressing I just can’t help feeling sorry for Baby V”

“Baby V?”

“Yes, my younger self. I don’t think life is what she imagined it was going to be, it’s a lot more pressure than I ever wanted it to be. I envisaged myself watching Woody Allen movies to my hearts content, eating however many strawberries I wanted and not getting fat, smoking and never feeling guilty. That’s just not the way it turned out.

“But what’s wrong with that? Maybe life isn’t all that your younger self was hoping it would be but it’s certainly not that bad. Maybe you can’t watch woody Allen movies as much as you want but you’re not starving to death, you’re not scavenging around for money, otherwise you wouldn’t be smoking”

I stare at him through squinting, outraged eyes. He stares right back at me. How has this boy that I met 15 minutes ago managed to get to me so quickly?

Avery runs up out of no where. Hair flying madly in her usual mane, one dangly earring in because she’s too cool to find the other. She’s an eclectic mix of a million different things that she makes her own and I love her for it, she is the most fantastically unique person I’ve ever met in my life and I am oddly fascinated by everything about her. Noah comes sauntering up behind her. He’s a beautiful kid, who tried to get me into music but failed miserably at, his tussled blonde hair is ludicrously big but temptingly fluffy. I originally became enticed by his friendship because he was like a cloud of energy, there was something magical and intriguing there, you couldn’t definitively put your finger on what it was but he had something special. I liked that he liked me and we fit together apparently because he makes the music and I dance to it. I think I respect Noah more than I actually like him, I like that he thinks I’m cool enough to be his friend. Maybe this guy is right. Maybe my friends are just social experiments that I collect and study, then keep the ones that intrigue me the most.

“Sorry to interrupt V but we’re off to search for some vinyls in The Old Monkey, coming?” Avery says in her cheerful, exuberant tone. Introducing herself to Brody in a friendly way, she ignores the fact that he stares straight at me while shaking her hand.

“I’m coming now. It was nice to meet you Brody… “, I turn and start to walk away, willing him to call me back.

“V!”

“Yes?”

“Are you around for a coffee tomorrow?”

*

I walked away from that conversation with a feeling of strange contentment and realisation. I went home and wasn’t feeling the sense of dread that I usually do. I felt optimistic that I don’t have to stress about long term happiness because maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to dwell on it. Maybe the point of living is to enjoy every minuscule bit of happiness you can soak up. That’s what I told myself as I fell into bed that night anyway… I like him, I like him a lot.

Hopefully he’ll call in the morning.

“Write about a moment of uncertainty you have experienced”

My “moment of uncertainty” would, to most people, more likely be considered a “period of prolonged uncertainty that set off a chain reaction that has led to being permanently uncertain”.

In 2009 my two grandmothers passed away from breast cancer, both in their early 60’s, me the tender age of 11. It felt, in a way, like a piercing to the heart that cut away a part of my being that has never returned, not to be overly dramatic about it. They were two people in my life who shaped me into being the person that I am today and their deaths turned me into a cynical, negative person who lives their life with a constant sadness bearing over them like a permanent rain cloud.

I began to look at life as something that wasn’t really worth anything, I didn’t really want to be alive without them and I started to realise that one day I was going to have to lose everyone I loved… I had only been on the planet for 11 years at this point, which lets face it, is not a long time, and already I felt as though there was only a part of me left without them. I was going to have to go through this pain, and pain 10 times worse throughout the rest of my lifetime. Why would I want that? The effect and influence they had on my life was so profound, I needed them as much as I needed air and water, without them I felt… feel, hollow.

I only bore you with the details of my troubled 2009 to give you a background to me and why my life has turned into the cynical existence of a 17 year old who is always uncertain. What my grandmother’s deaths did to me was shock me into no longer being certain of ones most valuable possession – life.

As an 11 year old, seeing women who were so great, had no faults in my eyes or as far as I’m aware anyone else’s, die in such a horrific manner made me look at life in a way that I had never done. I now saw it as something precarious and uncertain, something that couldn’t be taken for granted. Why should two women who for their whole lives had been strong and worked hard for their families, who believed deeply in god, who didn’t smoke or drink, die before their time? I felt, in a way, that there really was no reason to go on living. Why would I want to play the game that is life when realistically I will have to endure many close people dying, having to work incredibly hard to make money to keep my family in the type of life they deserve and hear all the horrible things that happen all over the world that I can do nothing about, when at the end of it all I’m going to be buried in a hole and eaten by insects just like everyone else.

It’s funny because even though I know I’m coming off as depressive, I’m actually one of the happiest and most confident people you could meet and it’s honestly not a façade. It is simply me being uncertain as to why I should be bothered to deal with all of the above and much more when I have no idea why I’m even here in the first place. What purpose do I actually have? What purpose does anyone really have in life? Why should I bother being alive when everything you do on a daily basis means nothing in the wider scheme of things and could end at any point, you’d die unknown and unremembered like billions of other people.

Uncertainty is something that paralyses me on a daily basis, something that will never go away because a person can’t teach themselves to be decisive. You see, it is this uncertainty that I have about life in general that I can’t always cover when it comes to everyday situations and life choices. For the most part, I am a very decisive person when it comes to issues such as abortion, gay marriage, whether god is real or other moral issues but these are things that I have made a decision on based on what I perceive to be right and wrong and factual thinking, but when it comes to my future I’m not always as certain…

For example, from the age of 8 I knew three things about myself, that haven’t changed to this day: I like to stand up for what I believe is right (whether or not people agree with me I have never really cared), I like to talk and I like money. So, I decided that law was a suitable option for me. It would also provide me with the ability to do what I crave most, which is give to my children what my parents have given to me, a loving childhood with everything I’ve ever needed. I also have a dream that I need to be married with my first child in my mid-twenties. Now this all seems to be a very definitive plan, from a very organised, definitive person, considering I am so set on it one would think that I would do anything to achieve it. However, this is where nagging uncertainty once again comes into it.

Do you really want to be based in Ireland for the rest of your life?
Your parents are willing to finance a gap year after school why would you not take it? Milan? Buones Aires? Caracas? Rio? Your dream locations why confine yourself to a tiny island?

But then the uncertainty nags at a deeper level:
You’re such a lazy person what make you think you’re capable of law?

Scratch that – how are you even going to get into law in college in the first place?

Then the little devil sitting on my shoulder starts to antagonise me with things that really hurt:
If you go away for a year, you’re one year later leaving college, when does your family start?

Your one goal is having a family but what if by some cruel twist of fate you aren’t destined to have one?

You couldn’t keep a boyfriend for more than 6 months what makes you think you could find a husband?

WHAT’S THE ANSWER TO ANY OF MY QUESTIONS? I don’t know… I’m uncertain.

Uncertainty can of course creep into your life in other ways aswell, not just in terms of the future which, judging from 90% of my classmates we are all in the same boat in regards to that, but in terms of decisions such as getting tattoos or drug taking, why not? You are given one body for an average of 75 years why not do what you want with it? Yes people may judge you but why is that relevant? When I die, I would rather say that I did everything I wanted to do in life and that I took advantage of the things that were possible, than living on the straight and narrow and have done nothing exciting. Then on the other side of the things, the other side of my brain is telling me “no, no what are you talking about if you get a tattoo then no one will ever employ you”, I mean how on earth am I supposed to make a decision about anything at all when my brain won’t even let me think clearly about a tattoo?

I like to think of the saying “the greater your storm the brighter your rainbow” when I get into this mind set, a mind set of not knowing why, I have to push out all thought, all uncertainty needs to be pushed to the back of my mind because like any deep feeling it can consume a person, it consumes me to the point where I shut down, not knowing what to do, what’s worth it and what isn’t. I like to hope that one day I’ll wake up and something will happen to me that makes me feel that life is worth living and that suddenly my reason for being here will become clear. But I know that I need to face the music and accept that that’s not realistic, part of being an adult is pushing through and doing what you need to do, be responsible.

All I want is peace of mind, all I want is to just not think so deeply about every minute decision.

Essentially, I just want the uncertainty to go away.