Isn't it time for your second life?
Most nights growing up I laid on my bed wondering if there were some people destined to live miserable lives. People to whom life would always be unfulfilling, with not too many moments of real happiness. Even then, those few lucid moments cloaked in a thick fog of discomfort. After a while, I was wondering if I was one of those people. Maybe you've been thinking the same of yourself.
I've seen how being lost can take many forms. You may get addicted to drugs. If you're lucky, it's just alcohol, or even sex. You refuse to live for yourself or propose to burn every bridge you build. Regardless of how you've tried to cope with it, you always come back to the mirror to see a foreign face. You know it is supposed to be yours, but it always feels like it belongs to someone else. “God, what I would give up to see what I truly look like,” you want to scream back at your reflection.
The journey starts when you feel uneasy as a kid, but you don't understand where the dread comes from. You begin feeling hollow by the time you get into your teens. You perceive how phony you have to be every day, trying to hide it, as if acting like a normal person will somehow actually make you normal. You then bring the delusion into your adulthood.
Each time you get your life together, it falls apart soon after. The dread never leaves. You think your purpose in life was to be born to be miserable, and maybe that is just the path for people like you and me.
Until you are left with nothing.
And maybe you start acknowledging the darkest parts of your mind you were ignoring.
And maybe you are left with no other option than to start accepting who you have always been.
Out of pure luck, suddenly there's an escape from this mind-numbing cycle. I do not know why we are the ones lucky enough to see a way out that isn't death, but I would tell you to take it without a second thought. Let us not find out what it will become of you if you don't change course.
From now on, life will become much more vivid than anything you've ever felt. It is going to be overwhelming, scary and euphoric. Every time your heart aches, every time you feel the world coming down, every time you get obsessed, every time you feel passion, all of it will become much stronger. But it will be more honest, you will finally see what the world has to offer to you.
When you watch a movie, you'll be taking in each frame with precision. When you listen to a song, you'll take every verse to heart. When your friends talk about their passions, you'll viscerally feel the same passion as them.
It really feels like you're reborn. Reborn into the person you were actually meant to be. Sometimes it is sad to reminisce about all the years you wasted living a lie, but just one year living your second life gives you more fulfillment than every previous year combined. It gets addicting quickly. You will learn what makes you tick, what makes you want to bash your head in, what it means to be yourself. It is going to leave you feeling dizzy, and maybe angry that it took you so long when other people experience it naturally while growing up. The world doesn't care about being fair to you. If you'd like to, you could spend the rest of your life with resentment, but do you want your second chance to go down exactly as the first one? You'll want to keep running and not be left behind again. Because you have discovered what living can actually be. You don't have to be miserable each waking hour, you get to pursue your own happiness.
I grieve for the people I've known that didn't get this opportunity, but I decided long ago I wouldn't let the guilt keep me from trying a second time. I've been waiting twenty-six years for this moment, it has to work now or it would mean that the part of me that wanted to die all this time was right. Life has always been arbitrary, hostile, confusing, for both of us. But it was worth enduring everything past what I thought was the end. When I was fourteen and sixteen, when I was nineteen and twenty one. Even when I was twenty five and my life felt apart, leaving me as nothing but the husk I knew I was.
Last week, a stranger recommended to me a playlist of songs they loved listening to during the summer of 2023. The very first song immediately stuck with me. Now I do not want to stop listening to that artist. It is cathartic hearing them sing about love and heartbreak, longing and letting go, now that I really know what all of those words actually mean. Many things will change your life, but feeling how they're doing it in the moment is something new to me. It is overwhelming, it is intoxicating. Neither your past self nor mine were ready to enjoy the absurdity and randomness of life, but we get the opportunity to do it this time.
Day by day, I find pieces of what I can truly call me. The me that screams relentlessly: “Life can be nurturing and hopeful.” I have been rediscovering things that have brought me joy before, pulling them closer to me this time, determined to not lose them again.
I finally got back my conscience and my will. I thought they didn't exist but they were just missing. They are here a few years late. Now I want to keep running to not be left behind again. Won't you try the same?