Blog, 

Or chat, as the kids will call it these days - when the fck did I become so old? 

Why was I so angry as a 20-year-old?

And roll on it will. Unravelling little fun size bits and pieces of hooha that make up this life - work, family, work... where the fuck will the friends go? Where the fuck will the freedom to do whatever the hell tickles our fancy at that particular moment go? What is to become of us in the future? What about our happiness? Our sense of contentment? What of them?

- 14th June 2008, the year I graduated (the first one) 

So much for this lil gritty bit of early-years angst. Clairvoyant much?

The friends (the good ones) stayed close enough but perhaps not quite close enough. Everyone else disappeared into the ether vaporised like little droplets of mist floating away in the wind as the years trudged on. Some grew, some stayed where they were, some created little cosy havens for themselves (god bless them) and the rest, I mean, do we really care about the rest? Not beyond the nosy auntie stalking you on Facebook kind of way.

The freedom? Hahah. Did we ever really have any freedom in this capitalist-centric system our forefathers decided to build for us but that, dear chat, is naive a view as any as I have recently found out. Will socialism be any better? Were we really better being cash-poor but rich in everything that made us human - community, love, green spaces, blue skies, birds and the bees. Was that freedom? Did culture thrive? Or was it that other forms of storytelling that prevailed back then were not so amenable to being written down and passed to those who did not grow up in said village. That our modern generations will never understand due the prose of years past never being written down on a Google doc.

All this to say, the freedom was never truly there. It obviously went away in the definition that we mean it to be but truly, dear chat, it never really was there. Our happiness? Our sense of contentment? Here and there, sprinkled throughout like a good backstory in a well-paced novel. I've learned to be grateful for the small pockets of happiness I find here and there. For family, for loved ones, for opportunities I've had, for health, for my brain, for the ambition that got me where I am. It wasn't the easiest journey getting to here, to who I am right now. Not where I am, location-wise (no, that's boring). Where I am spiritually, yes, my dear 20-year-old, we are happy and content, ever more so than we could ever wish for, hope for, or could ever realise we deserved.

So, yes, you were right to mourn the end of an era. I loved that you were so angry back then. You were being done an injustice and you rose above it not really knowing what was beyond the gates but determined to uncover the truth like some heroine in an epic fantasy unable to sit down quietly (well, she was quiet but the anger stirred) and accept that the life she grew into was all that was available to her.

Because, right now, my cat is lounging on his window hammock grooming himself while the birds chirp outside and the wind bristles the leaves on the trees lining the back of the garden and his mane is so long he has such trouble licking it to completion and it's just the darndest sight.