on the last day of being a child
I left, not knowing that I was leaving.
When I realised I'd left, I didn't know when or whether I would return.
Here I am, not knowing for how long.
As a kid - wherever be the demarcation nowadays; let's say in the days before I used words like "demarcation" or troubled myself with mid-sentence qualifications - to a kid, people fell easily into two categories: kids or grown-ups. For a time I didn't know how I knew; I just knew. Gradually however, numbers took on more significance so, hungry for structure and consistency, I surveyed the ages of the people I came across, and pegged out an arbitrary cut-off on the child/adult continuum. Naturally, the point got pushed back and back as the years wore on - whereas at age 6 it might've been 16, at 16 it became more like 21 - but at some point, I must've known all along, I was bound to outrun the clock as well as my capacity for denial.
That point is nigh.
It is coming up to another great divide: in some 4 months' time I'll have lived in this country for as long as I had in my first. Rather than nostalgia for the lost or appreciation for the present - though there is that and that - what dominates is an urge to take flight once more. This time on my terms.
There are choices to be made. If this be a gateway, do I leave all my baggage at the door or keep lugging it around with me? Do I heed my utilitarian learning or succumb to my hedonistic leanings? If I shed all that weighs on me to be grown up - the whom, the what, the wherefores - will I then, finally, grow up?
When I realised I'd left, I didn't know when or whether I would return.
Here I am, not knowing for how long.
As a kid - wherever be the demarcation nowadays; let's say in the days before I used words like "demarcation" or troubled myself with mid-sentence qualifications - to a kid, people fell easily into two categories: kids or grown-ups. For a time I didn't know how I knew; I just knew. Gradually however, numbers took on more significance so, hungry for structure and consistency, I surveyed the ages of the people I came across, and pegged out an arbitrary cut-off on the child/adult continuum. Naturally, the point got pushed back and back as the years wore on - whereas at age 6 it might've been 16, at 16 it became more like 21 - but at some point, I must've known all along, I was bound to outrun the clock as well as my capacity for denial.
That point is nigh.
It is coming up to another great divide: in some 4 months' time I'll have lived in this country for as long as I had in my first. Rather than nostalgia for the lost or appreciation for the present - though there is that and that - what dominates is an urge to take flight once more. This time on my terms.
There are choices to be made. If this be a gateway, do I leave all my baggage at the door or keep lugging it around with me? Do I heed my utilitarian learning or succumb to my hedonistic leanings? If I shed all that weighs on me to be grown up - the whom, the what, the wherefores - will I then, finally, grow up?
posted by In2MeC at 11:31 pm
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