Muse404

There is not an emptier feeling than laying on your small rock hard bed in dorms during university holidays wondering if this is really it. 

So this is it. 

Famous words always followed by an empty feeling every single time I say them. And to be honest lately I have been thinking them often. 

Every interest, talent and passion you had in high school has been brought to an abrupt halt and if you dare think or talk about it to any adult the infamous ‘you need to focus on your studies’ speech surfaces. 

And after my studies?

Oh yes how can I forget. Then it’s time to get to work. 

Network. Climb the ‘ladder’ and build a career. 

Often I see university as the start of the race we all sign up for after school. Though when I look around everyones lives looks like a construction site from here on forward.

The issue is we don’t really build what we want, there’s a blueprint everyone has to follow. Nobody verbally admits is but its almost a sort of knowing we all have and accepted. 

I am starting to realise that the conventional acceptable path after school is perpendicular to the ground and consist t of a bunch of building and climbing. 

Nobody bothers to realise that this road never really ends and most of us will simply never reach the ‘top’ everyone is chasing. Even if it forks we all end up on the same damn path one way or another. 

Ironically the few at the top absolutely did not follow a blueprint. At least not the one the rest of us are religiously quietly building according to. 

So how can we expect to reach it if we all follow the same blueprint. It is just physically impossible and so clear that the system has set us up to be some sort of slave with an illusion that we are building a path that reaches a million dollar view.  

There is so little space and this blueprint is making us flightless birds. They are cutting down our wings and making us compliant builders. 

We are all building someone else’s life, not our own. And that is why I just cannot sit still and watch it all play out in front of me. It is so frustrating to be in my 20’s and come to the realisation that I cannot do much about it. 

Then why not just leave? 

That is the easy solution I suppose but the system does punishes people who make this choice. Few actually get let of easy by simply just leaving.

Sorry for al the metaphors it just really feels that way sometimes. 

Right now I have about three bricks stacked on top of each other. Neatly at least. Every brick is a part of my soul I gave away to survive this new reality and accept the perpendicular race I am beginning to enter. 

Everyone around me is building so fearlessly they forget to look up and see what this all really looks like. I wish I never looked up or explored where exactly this empty feeling came from. 

But I cannot look down at my three bricks again. I want out. As corny as it is  to say but this is starting to feel like the matrix. 

I cannot be the only one who thought my 20’s were going to be the years. 

I can do what I want, dress how I want and go where I want. 

Why did no one tell me it is an even cruler cage than high school. 

How is it cruel one may ask? 

Well the whole world is at our fingertips yet we are politely trapped in yet another institution.  

In high school the cage had visible walls. At least they made it obvious that you cannot go anywhere. 

But now? 

There is this silent understanding that in reality I cannot actually go anywhere. Not without a whole lot of struggle and disappointment. 

Where I live, dropping out of university is social suicide. I hear the way other grown ups talk about people that simply chose to leave the race. 

We all used to be such dreamers. The sudden loss of imagination and dreaming from childhood to adulthood seriously needs to be studied. 

Is this what it means to become an adult? 

I used to be so artistic and individualistic in high school because naively I thought I was nearing freedom. 

The daydream I had about that moment I put down that pen after my last exams feels like a lie. Io thought at that second the doors to life finally opens. 

But then I wonder… I can make more of my life right now? 

Surely this isn’t it right?  This cannot be it. 

Why are adults so damn scared of wanting more. Is it so wrong to crave more than simply school university and work? 

I have taken everything that used to feed my soul away and that is the root this empty feeling. In a strange way our souls feel trapped and empty in university, because for the first time it understands that it cannot dream anymore the way it use to… because now this is the ‘reality’. We reached the timeline we used to dream about. Is there some realistic solution or plug we can pull to space this? Not that I know of. 

Yet I am going to try and be a ;title more sentimental over the dreams I had before this new reality. I will try to incorporate the things I know feeds my soul into my routine no matter how much I have to ‘focus on my studies’.

All I can do now is ignore the massive blueprint lying in my lap and keep dreaming about life the way I did before I knew it existed. 

Muse404