It really is amusing to hear what people think of you, especially those ‘closest’ to you. It’s not that am overly obsessed about the opinions of others – can’t lie that a few remarks haven’t bothered me but hardly more than the next Joe – but it still startles me to realize how little people, even those that I deem closest, know about me. It’s ridiculous that anyone would think me the ‘gung-ho adventurer’ type, poor anxiety -ridden me?! How deceived they all are (I take the extra effort to conceal those insecurities). Still, such trifles are flattery enough to drive me to such brazen foolhardiness, just so I can prove them right. ‘The guy walking naked into a game-reserve dangling a piece of blood-dripping flesh around his neck shouting, “oi Lions, get it fresh from here”, I have been that guy a few times.
It’s incredible that anyone thinks me to be smart, when am so good at self-destructive insanity. I even remember being termed as an ‘exceptionally-gifted child’ at one point – teachers are easily impressed and all too quick with their compliments – but all that seems like eons ago and am not even sure whether that kid grew-up to be me. I admit I have always had an inflated estimation of my own intellect, perhaps because I have let it all go into my head but if intelligence was based solely on the knowledge of one’s self, then on a scale of aptitude I would rank as a dim-wit!
Conformity has become the worst of my ineptitude; I am in awe of the man that I want me to be but he is unfamiliar to me, so instead I find myself becoming the person you think me to be. You paint a portrait colored with a brush of adventure, excitement and unlimited potential and its attraction is consuming; when mystery becomes uncertainty, contemplation becomes doubt and audacity becomes insanity, then I need you to define my identity! I used to be good at being me, different; always a rebel but I never needed a cause until now. I feel too old for the torn jeans, crazy hair-dos and random bus trips. Perhaps am just getting found out as an impostor, and the wanderer in me was just a shallow trick of illusion.
It scares me to know that when I look into my mirror, I see you! It’s utterly horrible, that the psycho-babble you so religiously pander to – ‘quarter-life crisis’ is en vogue – should seem comprehensible to me and even worse that it should begin to describe my condition. I just wanted to fit-in; it’s cold and lonely watching on from the outside and the path well-trodden doesn’t take an effort to follow and it has led me to this tragic predicament. We are now shrouded in the same depression; your uncertainties and insecurities have become my own. If only my cure would work for you; a pinch of psychedelic and I can be everybody you could never be!