Vulnerability

I am feeling rather melancholic tonight. I want to blame it on the weather (come on, raining for like 5 days straight?), yet I know that it is not just about the weather. I am tired, physically. I feel like I am getting older, physically. Like my body is giving up on me, slowly, but surely. I guess everybody must experience this one way or the other. It is the moment that you realise that you are no longer 18 years old. You no longer can stay up all night cramming for exams, or watch movie marathons till the wee hours in the morning. Or in my case, chatting with random strangers on the internet. At the same time, I feel so juvenile. Trust me, it is not because I have zits on my face. It is because ... I don't know. I don't think this is another bout of mid-life crisis - seriously, how many of those can you have in a life time? And if this is my version of mid-life crisis, then that technically means I would die just short of turning 60. Now, that's a scary thought.

What is it in life that is worth living for? What is it that we are searching for, day in and day out. Why do we insist on being happy all the time? It is not like we are going to die if we are not happy temporarily. Yet even when we are feeling down, we convince ourselves to feel better, instead of just completely feeling the emotion, and then letting it go. Why are we so afraid of being unhappy? Why are we so against feeling down?

And once we are happy - so what?

I cannot believe I am sitting here, asking this question.

One of my professors told me, at the conclusion of my degree, that a lot of people in this life are searching for the wrong things. This is why they keep searching for the next "big" thing that they thought they wanted, that they convinced themselves they wanted. If we spend more time convincing ourselves that we are happy instead of just enjoying the feeling, then are we really happy? Or are we just pretending we are happy. And if it is true, is it so wrong to pretend to be happy?

For as long as I can remember, my (bio) mother was always unhappy. Dare I say that she is unhappy even until today. The sad thing is that she is one of those women who are stunningly beautiful. I have a lot of people telling me that she is beautiful, not because she is my mother, but because she just is. Even until today, she remains beautiful. Yet she is so sad, and I see that, and I feel that it is so wrong, because someone like her should not be sad. She has so much to live for, such that it is painful to see her being trapped in her sadness. I wonder if she wants to get out.

Because right now, for some reason I don't quite comprehend (or more like refuse to confront), I don't feel as happy as I'd like to be, and I want to get out of this feeling. Typical in the Elle-kind-of-way, I ventured off in this analysis of my motivations, my goals and all the things that I have been searching for, some that I have found, some that I am still searching for. I admit that sometimes I am so busy searching for these things that I lose myself in the process, that I forget who I am, and who I'd like to be.

Surely, life cannot be just about searching and searching and searching. Surely life is more than that. Is it not?

I am not so sure any more.