And for a brief second there while walking home, I felt invincible. It’s a weird feeling to have when you’re so young, but it’s something that I’ve been told by ever adult I’ve ever known.
Teenagers think that they are immune to everything.
And it’s true. We think that we can live through the cancers and the apocalypses completely unscathed. We think when the moment comes we’ll be able to fend for ourselves without the help of friends or family. We think that when a car comes speeding towards us we’ll be able to flip it over and walk away without even a scratch.
The problem with immortality is, it doesn’t exist. We walk home completely drunk, tumbling and stumbling over words and snowbanks and leave nothing behind except for our foot steps and maybe a dent in the ditch from where we passed out in the freezing cold.
And it is in this moment that mortality, the nearness of the end, hits us in the not-so-frost-bitten ego and sets us in a home-like place in our minds. It tells us that there really is nothing more to life than this. Drinking, working, sleeping, friends, family, misunderstandings, “communication”, big TVs, warm homes, a comfy boyfriend, few moments of weakness, government, but not really government, knowledge but not wisdom and all the little, insignificant things in between. This is all that life is.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s just a real thing. It’s life. It’s a fragile and easily tampered with life.
Give me my journal back Kayla.
