I look at Martin now and realize that when we first started hanging out late last year, I thought of us as two kids. We were two kids hanging out after work and chatting. Now, almost one year later, he seems to have aged. The stuff that's happened since then--was it really enough to turn him even older for his age? Or has he really been this man the whole time, and it just took me a year to figure that out? (No matter how old he gets, I'll love him, but that's not the point right now.)
What about me? I don't feel that much older, and yet I know that I'm different, too. How old am I now? How is it that I can think these little grown-up things all day (write this e-mail, read that research, withdraw X amount of money--crap; I forgot to bring my NBI clearance so I can photocopy it) and still want to plop down on the mat, cut shapes out of paper, and color with crayons? Why does the first seem like a pretend and the second the real thing Kat is supposed to do?
I know the danger of regressing, but I also know the danger of losing child-likeness. The things I want to do, on which side of the line do they fall?
I watch "TekkonKinkreet" and feel for White, wish I were him, wish I had everyone's understanding that I just don't have the right screws to work in this kind of world. But am I really wired differently, or do I just not want to be here?
My first dips into Surrealism--"I've never cried over an art movement before," I told Martin--particularly Surrealist visual art--have been fun, but they scare me, too.
Are all these things--the childish/-like desires, the feeling of not-belonging, the interest in Surrealism and the unconscious--attempts at escape? Or are they an uncovering?
How can I tell between the lazy self not wanting to leave the comfort zone and the right and true self who knows what really fits, and so comforts, me? Who am I supposed to be? Who am I now? How old am I, really?
Comments (1)
i think that these things that keep us a child and the things we know will always be a loved/preferred things-to-do are the ones that keep us who we are. there should be no "line". i think to lose them would be to lose what we really love in life. hey. we grew up with these things. and no "growing up" should take it away from us. otherwise we'd go insane and callous and, well, sad.
kat, i never think you're wired wrong. let us believe we are wired special (in all the good kind of way ^_^). we get to always know how it is to be a child and still say that we are very good at playing "adults" ^_~ we are disney babies and lazy-perfect-countryside-days-in-the-bushes-and-empty-street kids. arent we so lucky to have such happy younger years? ^.^
so we learn and experience some things we'd rather not... but i always love doing simple childish joys. yey for us! ^_~