Pat me on my helmet because obviously I'm a fucking retard and send me on my way

There comes a time when handling everything with care and dignity is just null and void. Walking with ones head held high, treating situations with delicacy and grace- it doesn't mean anything if you're the only one doing it. It's about choice, it's about finality and making the decision to move forward when the past is nipping at your heels and demanding to be held on to, begging to not be left in the dust as you approach the future while coming to terms with the current present.

Being caught in a standstill while the world moves around you is never fun, never knowing what to do or where to go- no one ever said it was easy and there's no definite map to the roads you may tread. If you proceed with caution, if you tremble in the wake of something new- it could very well pass you by. The last thing you can do in life is play the martyr, but you can't keep acting, reacting and enacting while everything around you falls in a state of entropy. Becoming comfortable in chaos after awhile is stultifying, and can suffocate- living in a waking dream is pointless if there is no end, no ultimate goal.

Contemplate the edge of the universe, consider the enveloping blackness- stars blotted out, blinked out by black holes- the end- if you concentrate hard enough you can end up with a nose bleed and one hell of a headache. This is how I find myself feeling when considering the choices of my future, to me it feels like a lightning storm- there are bright flashes, glimpses of moments in time and then all is calm, quiet. It's all about choice, and no one can choose for me- I have to decide for myself what is right and how to make my approach.

I carry the ghosts of the past, I walk with the remnants of paths I'd walked down- either I stopped, was stopped, was forced to turn back or ran blindly ahead but found myself retracing my previous path- following the gumdrops I'd left myself on the way in. I've always known my escape route, I memorize my surroundings and know how to pull back, now how to retreat. In the past few years I've been lost, birds ate the breadcrumbs I left and for a long awhile I was content with that knowledge because I assumed I knew where I was being led and followed happily into what I thought would be the sunset on the hardships of the past.

Now I stand on the cusp of my life- 5 years from 30, counting down the days to that supposedly daunting age. At 25 I still am in a state of awe at the thought of being an adult, though I have surpassed the milestones and defining moments that have already welcomed me into the world of being a 'Grown up' years before. I don't know to be honest if that actually means anything in the grand scheme of things, I sometimes feel like David Copperfields opening lines- 'I was born, I grew up', but what happened in between? What makes me an adult anyway? Age? Bills? Death and taxes?

If it's maturity I reached that long ago, I've been taking care of myself since I was a child, I moved out of the nest as soon as I could and have experienced the hunger pains that come with not enough money, not enough food and bills due. I still feel like a child though, I'm first to admit when I am ignorant of a subject and am still finding my footing in the world. I've always known what I wanted to do with my life, and as I've grown it's only evolved into a goal, something attainable yet so far away.

The path I'm on- the life I lead, I have no one to answer to. I'm not tied down by a partner or children, a house, a mortgage and I've been told I'm lucky to not have those responsibilities and still have my youth. I've learned to put things down, let things go and know when something is for the most part dead, and that I should stop poking it with proverbial stick with odd fascination. I feel I've spent far too long dwelling not only in my own head, but on what has placed me in the position I am in now and for the most part I no longer pine for unrequited requests.

I've learned to demand more of myself, I know when I've reached my limits but while knowledge is power it doesn't mean I have to use it and sometimes I don't- but I also know that when the burden is too heavy I can ask for help. Pride and being stubborn only hinders my growth and so I can ask for help now, but it doesn't mean I ask for it. I'm hungry to learn, I love to educate myself daily- this is a slight change from when I was a child because I was headstrong and easily bored that along with being bullied for having a brain and no real beauty to speak of held me back. Now, I have personality to make up for what I lack,  I can listen, I'm compassionate and I'm a fighter. I've survived self inflicted harms whether physical or emotional, I've licked my wounds and allowed them to heal when others take the reins from me and do it themselves. I work everyday to be positive and hopeful, I struggle to not be disappointed and fret for too long when I don't always practice the new found patience I taught myself to have. Does any of this make me an adult?

I know my faults, I'm almost a scholar in the inward and outwards failures I've schooled myself in. I smoke though I know it's bad for me, I doubt myself, my intellect when challenged, I drink pop and coffee to excess despite knowing that I know it's worse for me than the average person because I had kidney failure. I over sleep, I procrastinate, I love overpriced shoes and while I try to live without regret- I lament at times on how my biting tongue and past bitterness cost me more than I'll ever let on. I take the blame for things that are not my fault because throughout my life I have been conditioned to do so and I feel too much sometimes for things that are out of my control. I'm flawed, I kill plants and envy those who can be more carefree than I and still hold it all together. I covet what I find beautiful, I still hold a fanciful concept of love and regularly find myself disappointed, nursing my ideals along and onto the next prospect. I believe in unconditional love finally, after many discussions when I was younger that no such thing exists. I don't know when it happened, but somehow along the way in my journey bitterness lost the hold on my heart and I fell in love with love. Doesn't this all make me a child still?

I have a fascination with the edge of life- I've been told I'm infatuated with the non normal, darker aspects of life, what's ugly to you is quite possibly the most wonderful thing I have ever laid eyes on. Jokes are made that I could never do 'normal' but I always ask, what exactly is normal? At parties, in functional social situations when I'm asked what I want to do for a living I respond honestly and speak as well as I can to convey what I want to do. Before I know it I'm pegged as Clarice or a serial killer in training- I've learned to roll with these punches, but it bothers me that the focus is off. I've learned to deal, learned to shrug and make jokes- self depreciation is how I've gotten this far in life, I guess it can carry me a bit further.

In and with all of this I'm still stumped at the fork in the road, I've had intentions of leaving the state since I was 21 and yet here I still am. Leaving has become my mantra of sorts, I toe the line for myself everywhere else and can make the tough choices but when it comes down to stay or go, I'm lost. I know friends who refuse to leave, they love where they are and what surrounds them- and I've wondered why I've always been perpetually at unrest about being here. For a long time I wondered if life would change without me and that scared me into staying, I've been talked into staying by those who say they won't ask me to stay and some view my need to break free of the state as running. At one time it was about running, now it's become a matter of unease.

Like a curious astronaut I want to see the world from a different angle, I'm aiming for the stars and refuse to settle for less. It's just a matter of drive and shedding fear, I worry that if I wait too long I'll become resentful of having never done anything I set out to do when I became an 'adult'. The choice is mine and the time has come to stop worrying about dignity and grace, or responsibility and logic and just leap.

For what? I'm not quite sure.