Diary of a Whimsy Kid

I am almost halfway through the age 21 and in true Mpho style, I am about to take you through 21 random thoughts in my mind, or maybe not 21 exactly.

It is quite strange that I spent all my life looking forward to this age, but when my birthday finally arrived, I was suddenly not ready to let go of the notion that I am on my other round of sixteen.

Anyway, into the headspace of a forever 21 girl:

Showing up becomes an extremely important accomplishment when you know how life gets when you do not, but it also does not feel quite enough at the same time.
It is very easy to feel left behind when you measure yourself against your own set timeline and get a negative score. Sometimes, the competition is the ideal self you had envisioned, not anyone else, and that is a difficult problem to overcome. It is very important that you do.
I used to think I consumed a lot of coffee, and now I consume a lot of coffee and celebrate not remembering the last time I drank coke.
Sometimes, I wish they could put politicians as objects in a rage room.
I have watched such green flag romance films since last November, and it really sucks a little when their delulu wears off and I stop thinking about how I should not die before I experience a lovely lovey dovey love story. I have developed a very contradictory pro-romance anti-romance-for-me syndrome, but not really. Also, it annoys me when people assume that I am not a lover of love because of that. I am love’s biggest lover, and that is probably one spark that keeps the poetry in me burning. Anyway, I am very happy that the film industry is slowly starting to not push the agenda of toxicity in both romantic and platonic relationships.
I am actively working on listening more and speaking less, after years of believing I was a great listener only to realise that, well, not really. I found my voice one day and have since lacked the balance between attentive silence and nonstop talking. I either talk too much or not at all, and I am a terrible listener when I wear the former, which equates to bad conversationalist and ultimately bad friend.
Trying to be a villager after spending a very long season being inactive in your village is a very huge gap to fill and in other aspects, it is never filled.
I value being able to easily walk up to my floor when the elevator is down more than pretty elevated views now. Am I getting old?
I have been trying to unlearn the tendency to use all the campus routes with lifts over walking up the stairs, but it’s become reflexive. For this reason and many others, my fitness goals are starting to seem like a joke.
Eating is still not something I am keen to do and honestly, I can write a whole essay about my aversion to the eating process.
Every three days, I am reminded of my need to own a camera.
I have done quite a lot of minor stupid things this lifetime, and they continue to haunt me in a major way.
I am unable to envision or look forward to the distant future anymore.
I lost lots of my pictures and videos recently, and it has since kept driving me mad. I do not trust any form of storage now. I spend my days trying to draw up multiple forms to keep my archive but end up spiralling over thoughts of what could go wrong with each one of them. An alternative needs an alternative.
I think the degree I am pursuing is really interesting, but I am not sure how to tailor it to be my kind of interesting because I have no idea what my kind of interesting is.
I want to do everything I wish to do all at once and I live with the constant frustration of never being able to do. I do not need an intersection of everything; I need a realistic union.
I have spent this entire year thinking excessively but lacking the ability to articulate or structure those thoughts.
The pain of a friendship breakup is still one of the cruelest feelings life can ever put you through, especially when you would have never in a million years seen it coming. The glitch in your mind and the extra caution that comes with it too.
My mother has kept me alive in more ways than one, and I am planning on buying the entire universe for her, so I need everyone to start packing up.
Faith is a highly complex system, and one can never sustain it on their own and I have absolutely no idea how I would survive without mine.
I do not have a wish list but if I did, prayers would be on number 1 and then repeated throughout the list.
It is very easy to feel ungrateful when you are sad or whatever.
I have said “yoh” more times than I have said anything else this year because my flabber keeps moving beyond gasted.
21 years later and I still overanalyse every single human and non-human interaction of my life and avoid as many as possible so that I do not have more to analyse. Welp!!!
I went to the theatre and got my first big screen experience (never been to a cinema or theatre before, yes). I really loved it. It also opened thoughts about why experiences and memories matter, I have no idea why they do.
I rarely use the phrase “pisses me off” but the tendency of people to tell you they have something and not tell you immediately will never not piss me off. As a person, you always have the option to not say anything until you are ready to talk. This does not apply to situations like “I am not okay, but I am not ready to talk about it yet” and alike.
We talk about how the moments and non-material experiences and all that is what life is truly about, but we make the memories, meet the people, love the people, colour the life, feel good and then what? Does it change something about how we feel when we die or where we end up or what our life amounts to?
I am finally learning how to lean on myself (besides leaning on God) and I am glad, but it is also the loneliest and most anxious time of my life and there is nothing I like about it. I am out here facing the anxiety of going out to wherever by myself and being a good friend to myself before expecting others to. Also, every year, I realise how hard friendship is despite how much I love the concept of it all. What a terrifying thing!
I am learning how to accept compliments even if I do not believe them. A friend had to teach me this, the first part of it anyway.
I desperately wish to experience a colourful life, however that might look like. To please my whimsy. To dance in the rain. To run and laugh into the night. To sing in front of the mirror. To not hold myself from loving explosively (I know my less usually seems like too much to some, but I always wish I could be less afraid to go all in with my loved ones). To bake a lot and mess up cooking recipes and wash the food down with apple juice. To knit and crotchet and finally learn to tailor my own clothes. To twirl as much as I want. To know how to restfully rest. To not chase time. Some days, I am leaning towards that, and on some, very far from it.
I came to the realisation that I do not know how to get over stuff – things, feelings, places, people. I know how to let go of but not how to get over that. Sometimes I feel like it is unfair that I have to detach from most things, and other times, I need to get it all out of my system. I do not have an archive, I am the archive and this specific museum does not know how to let the old pieces go as it accommodates the new. It hoards them all.
I do not trust my mind, and in turn, myself. You should not either.
What to do?