I wasn’t lost but I was scared

For the first 16 years of my life, I almost never took public transportation. My mother drove us everywhere, because she is many things at once and most certainly a superstar. I grew up getting from point A to point B without questioning the why, the how. From home to school. School to piano lessons. Piano lessons to home-cooked dinner. Dinner to getting an A in Maths. (“Why not A*?”)

They say a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. But when you get to the other end, what are you supposed to do then? Call your mother again and ask, she must have an answer.

I got to point B and made objectively bad career decisions and mother said, there will be a point C, and then point D, and E, you could even skip a few and go back to experience them later when you’re ready, but other people made me feel like all point B had to offer me was the edge of a cliff I should willingly throw myself off of if I don’t buy a house by age 25.

It was difficult, getting to point C. Uber drivers cancelled on me many times and I got derailed by the rain. At one point I fell asleep on the train and missed my stop so it took twice as long. It was weird there, I couldn’t recognise myself. Some people called it an identity crisis but what else would you have if not yourself in times of confusion like this? I couldn’t afford mistaking my purpose in life for something it wasn’t.

Then I learned that some brains work differently and need antidepressants to feed themselves extra serotonin. I packed my bags and caught the earliest bus to point D, disappointed I had to take my brain with me.

This time, I couldn’t recognise anyone. The assholes were now good people, and I realised that they only seemed like assholes to me when we were in school because I was an asshole to them. Do I deserve good things if I am not good? I wrote love letters to myself because no one else could say the things I wanted to hear.

My mother called and I was proven wrong.

Maybe the fire in us burns brighter when we’re younger because it needs to fuel multiple dreams at once. The illusion dies with every birthday dinner. It’s okay because we start finding things like waking up in the morning a step closer to the next achievement in our life and we all enjoy telling this common lie to ourselves every single day.

I wonder how much further I could’ve gone had I treated them like pitstops and not end destinations.

Prompt: Commuting