I HATE CHILDREN - a brief explanation about life at the age of 22
I HATE CHILDREN - a brief explanation about life at the age of 22
I am jealous of my young brother who is 7 years old. He called me the other day and showed me how much he enjoys this one web game, it was a funny game where you have to balance a toy car as it spins on top of a rotating disk. He likes to babble in english and surprisingly his english is not that bad. If he were to give an IELTS speaking test, he would range somewhere around 3.0 to 4.0, which is not that horrible considering he can't articulate his feelings properly and uses wrong words at the wrong time. His brain is still developing. Once when I was back home in Nepal he showed me the middle finger, just so, clueless about it's meaning, or at least I hope he was.
So, why am I jealous of him? I mean who wouldn't be? Look at him. Look.
He's small and a tiny tiny tiny human being. The whole world is his playground. He looks at the sky and sees faces in the clouds. He looks at the ground and it seems like the perfect passage for his toy cars. He looks at the bricks plastered on the house and thinks its the exact spot to crave his name into. He plays web games where we have to balance a toy car. He looks at his friends, wild, carelessly running through the streets, half of them bare naked the other half fully dressed because their mother told them to be. For him what matters is the present. There's nothing beyond it. There's no fear of tomorrow or the worry of laundry. There's no pressure of living the dream rich life or the ambiguity of a job interview's result. For him, what matters is now, just now. He will smile and laugh because he feels like it. He will cry and run away because he feels like. He is free. He is a tiny human being.
And, I am not. I am not tiny, nor am I a human being.
A VOID INTO ADULTING AND THE PAIN OF HEARTBREAKS
I have to constantly play music on my phone or a youtube video to keep my mind from thinking because as soon as it wonders I am fucked. It will worry about tomorrow, worry about the laundry and worry about the dream rich life. It will wonder about the possibility of never making it and wonder about the could've been, the ifs and the buts. It will wonder about all the heartbreaks and wonder about all the suffering that is to come and imagine dreams that perhaps can never be touched. It will understand the world I am in and the helplessness of me. It will show me the brutality of human beings and the ache of loneliness. And it will make me feel, feel a sting in my heart, a sting of adulthood.
I, too, was once like my brother. I still am in some way, at least more than most people around me. I still dream and I still laugh a bit. I still cry sometimes and I still ache when I should. I still love and I still wonder about the endless possibilities. I am a filmmaker, I live in delusion. But boy, it's getting harder and harder each day. Everything now seems to be tainted in grey. Everyone in their own bubble. No one wants to talk about things no more. They don't want to just stay with you in a bench and wonder about a leaf that fell. Everyone is too busy and the funny part about it is, they are busy inside themselves more than they are busy outside. I, too am a culprit of this.
Unlike my brother, I cannot live in the present. I tried. I am trying. I went to shower the other day and tried to just think about the water that poured on my skin. I tried to concentrate on that warm feeling. I always wanted a shower in our house when I was a kid and now that I do have it, it's nothing special. Even with that concentration my mind couldn't stop itself from thinking about the past. From thinking about the lonely life I am leading currently and from thinking about the inevitable tomorrow which is killing my childhood day by day.
I always have considered myself a good man, as good as a flawed man can be. I have always had friends and lovers. I have always sat with one of my friend who's as in delusion as I am and wondered about the leaf that fell in front of the bench. I have always had it but on September 6, 2023, it stopped. That is the precise moment, the precise date, I was no longer a tiny tiny human being. That's the day I left home.
I broke my heart somewhere around October, I don't remember when exactly. I had loved her and she had loved me too but things just weren't meant to be. It's difficult to process life when you're helpless. Initially I couldn't understand, I thought we could fix it but turns out while you're adulting there are some things you can't fix. I have one dialogue in my film "Loving you is my favorite mistake" where the female character says, "We can't unbreak things now, we aren't kids anymore." And that is how I felt. How I am feeling. And on that dim day in October, I changed again. A part of me dissolved. A child in me, a dreamer. A lover.
Fast forward to the present. Canada and the western world. I live with my friend, he is a good friend. We enjoy life ourselves as much as we can. We get drunk, we talk about the fallen leaf and wonder about souls and dreams. I like that. But then, we also have to go out and see everyone else. And I don't know if it's just me but the whole wide world, the people around me seem to be very hollow. It's like everything is tainted in grey. Everyone lost. Everyone not in the present. Everyone black and white. But-
I see colour. I do. I see colour in those tiny feet and happy eyes. I see colour in them and I hate it. Partly because I can never be like them now because I am too far gone and partly because life never gives you a chance to hold on to your delusions. You will have a heartbreak and the dreams will die. The only thing that keeps me going each and every day is the love I have for my family and for films. The day I stop typing screenplays or making films is the day I am fully dead. Remember that. I will exist but I am dead. Because the only child left in me, the one who wonders about it all is the filmmaker kid and the world is trying to burn it down too, like it burned down the lover and the child. I am fighting back, I am always fighting. I hope you do too.
Love your childhood self. Embrace it. Life is too tough already to let that kid in you die. The day you wake up and don't really feel anything is the day you die.
No wonder- I hate children. I know you do too. :)
I strongly agree!
ReplyDeleteYep children are too happy :( I hate that
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