No, not me being overly dramatic but me having listened to far too much Michelle Branch due to nostalgia.
Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here. Not here as in on this planet because I feel there are some questions that answer themselves. For those of us who can't come up with our own conclusions then they should just accept the answer is 42 and move on. 'Here' referring to what I'm doing with my life. I have a Plan B (Journalism) and a Plan C (Law) and no Plan A. Because I figure you should love Plan A so much that when you talk about it, tears should automatically start flowing. Well, the first few times anyway. But that's not it. Not articulate enough anyway. Plan A should be the something untypical.
My motto for when I'm older. If it's typical then I don't want it. Not the quintessential part time working woman (journo? lawyer?) role, not the husband, the two kids or their car pool. Not the constant bickering, the compromises, the mid life crises (because yes, there is more than one) and the realization that eventually these people will leave you and all you have is yourself but then again who-are-you? I've seen all of that. I've seen how people cling to it. To it's order and routine and predictability.
So then what do I want?
Truth is, I don't know. I could say 'freedom' and you'd laugh at me. I grew up compromising. Staying quiet at the dinner table, biting my lip and being careful of my dupatta. That sort of thing. But sometimes I say 'freedom' out loud just to test it out. To taste it really.
I see typicality everyday. Dinner guests and their forced, polite conversation. I find it funny, when we're all sitting at the table, to wonder about how much we all really hate each other. But it's not just dinner table conversation. I see it everywhere. Friend's dreams and attitudes. (What are we talking about these days? Prom dates, of course.) Snide comments and the looks we all sometimes get. Okay, so I get them a lot. Even the opinions of teachers, the behaviour of strangers. I don't know. It's not something I can define. I just know that I don't want any of it. I don't want to be typical now -and unfortunately sometimes I am and sometimes I need to be - and I certainly don't want to be typical later.
I love phenomenal women. Audrey Hepburn, Baroness Blixen, Oprah, the Rani of Jhansi, Sujata Bhatt, my mother. It's really that simple. I want to be one too. And it doesn't matter whether I go for Plan A or Plan B or C if I realize that really, they were Plan A all along.
We've been put on this planet for a reason. To be untypical, to understand what it wrong and what is right and how huge the grey areas really are, to perhaps try and right those wrongs and most importantly to do what we love. Once we understand that things like prom dates, shopping, bitchery and infatuation seem miniscule in comparison.
After all, social suicide may just be a dramatic term and nothing else
