There is not much to be said when you are alone. There is not much to hear but the sound of your own thoughts. Not much to watch but the memories in your head. Not much to feel but the ghost of what was. When you are alone… the sun can either rise or stay down. You can either make a fire or find there is nothing to make a fire with. 

I have been alone now for almost 4 months. I was with someone for 5 months. I held a hand for 5 months. I held a heart for 5 months. I made a smile for 5 months. And now, I walk alone. Now I hold a book. Now I smile for myself. I thought being with someone was a gift, I thought it was a privilege. Only now do I see, being with someone, anyone, it is terrifying. It is terrible. It is scary and not at all enjoyable. I was with someone. I had a person, a half, a personal hand-holder/therapist, and I let him go. I walked away. Not because I was going through some crisis, but because it was the right thing to do. I did it because deep down, beneath the guilt, and the pain, and the heart-wrenching love I felt, I knew, I needed to dance on my own. I needed to drop the hand, the heart, the hold, and stand in the middle of that floor by myself. I needed to feel the music in every pore of my being, in every corner of my soul… What I didn’t know is that letting go.. it’s not that simple. It isn’t as easy as letting go of a hand and dancing in the middle of that floor with my all by myself… Letting go , it takes pieces of you. It takes what we cannot give. It takes what we didn’t know we had. I am still letting go. I am still trying to get to the middle of that dance floor. And I will get there. I know I will. But it hurts. Each step hurts. Each breath hurts. Everything hurts. I always thought love was a gift, and it may be so for some, but I don’t think those people know about what happens when you try to do something in spite of love. I don’t think those people know about what happens when you stand up for yourself, I don’t think they know that love, whilst wondrous and happiness-inducing, is also harsh and cruel. Love, whilst wild and uncontrolled, is strict and deceiving. Love… is a thing that you can’t escape from. It is a thing that chases you. Even when you don’t want it to. So, I’ll make it to the middle of that dance floor, and ill dance my heart away, but I’ll do so being weary of love, I will do so making sure that whomsoever comes my way, will let me dance on my own and not have to hold my heart the whole way. 

Would you believe it, it’s been 7 months now. I’m still kind of hurting. I’m still trying to reach that dance floor. I’m still picking up the pieces that I left behind of myself. I’m still growing. But I’m better now. I’m different. I think that’s a big part of it. A big part of this growing and changing. And I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m breathing. This time I picked the song. Maybe I’m still stuck in that crowd. Maybe I’m not in the middle of that floor yet. But I can hear the music. I can hear my pick. So yeah, I’m not perfect yet, but I’m okay. I’m happy. I’m dancing.

A lot of the time we each walk through our days trying to get through them. We try to keep going. To keep moving in any way that we can. Most times we aren’t focused on what comes next. We’re just focused on finishing what we’re doing. On being done with the first step. Only then, only once that is finished, once that “step” is gone do we actually pause to consider that there could be another possibility. That’s just the world we live in. We live in the now, and sometimes, if we’re lucky enough, if we have the privilege, we look to tomorrow. 

Not many people have a tomorrow in this world. Not many people can have the opportunity to look to the next sunrise. But we do. That said, why are we ruining each other? Look around you, is anyone happy? Is anyone reveling in riches or swimming in piles of money? They’re not. The truth is that everyone is scared. Everyone is tired. But most of all? Everyone is done looking for tomorrow. In a country  where tomorrow is supposed to be guaranteed people have stopped expecting it. People instead are reduced to being scared of exploding Tesla bombs, of brainwashed people driving trucks into crowds, of strange men with bad intentions, of even grabbing the door handle to a car. I graduate this year. I officially exit the small world I have grown up in and enter that of the rest of the adults around me. To say I am terrified is not even broaching the smallest toe of my fears, it is instead touching the water around it and jumping out in response to the ice-cold sensation such a touch has instilled. You’d think I was terrified of the people around me, or of the world itself, but I’m not… I’m terrified at the idea that we have stopped believing in tomorrow. Because today I am only a child, but tomorrow I can change the world. If there’s no tomorrow, how can I do that? 

I once believed there was no tomorrow too, I once was hopeless and lost. It took me a while to see the sunrise. But, after a couple of early mornings I understood, tomorrow is not dependent upon the words we put into it, it is not reliant upon the hopes we place in it, it does not care for any of this, tomorrow is determined by the hope we put in today. It is determined by the words we put in today. It is determined by the work we put in the day we live in. That is where tomorrow comes from. That is where we find the true answer to the fear everyone lives in. 

That said, we all should look to tomorrow, we should all work for it. If we don’t, if we ignore it, we risk losing everything. So I implore you, all of you, all of us, let’s work for tomorrow. Let’s earn it. That way it’ll never have an excuse to abandon us. 

There was once a time where I would’ve described love as free. As happy. As everything that is the opposite of bad. But I was wrong. Truth be told, I usually am. Love is not that. It isn’t any of those things. Love is knowing all the risks and still be willing to take them. Love is selfish. And selfless. Love has layers to it. Layers of forgiveness, of pain, of loss, of gain. Layers that I don’t even have a name for. Love is something no one person can describe. It’s this thing that sneaks up on you. It’s this unnamable force that slowly, but surely, overcomes. It tugs at the corners of your mouth and leads to the unexpected. Love is your mother telling you you have terrible taste in music. Love is your dad telling you you’re wrong no matter how right you may be. Love is listening to nonsense but still listening because it’s coming from your best friend who happens to be your grandfather. Love is laughing with an old lady who happens to be your grandmother. Love is sitting on a porch swing by yourself watching the sunset. Love is knowing that you can go home. Love is this thing that doesn’t make sense. Love is knowing when to stand up and when to back down. Love is not being scared to say the truth. The fact is that love is too many things. It’s hard, but it’s never ugly. It’s never terrible and coarse. It is never abusive or a game. In love you never lose because if you lose you lose everything. In love there’s no blaming, there’s no fighting because, there’s no pride and ego. In love you find that there is a lot. There’s a million different reasons to give up, and yet, in love you will find that whether you love yourself or someone else, it will always end up working. If it’s love you will never doubt it. You will never get up and run away. If it’s love you’ll face it and find that you were wrong. Because when it is love it shows you not what you want to see, but what you need to see…

When we’re young we learn our key lessons. We learn how to get through the days. We learn how to cope.  We learn the things that we will take with us throughout our whole journey. We go through moments that are hard. We go through moments that are beautiful. We go through the highest most amazing times in our lives and we go through a dark time where there are fake smiles and fake laughs. The one thing they all have in common is that they’re in the past. They’re all memories waiting to be made. They’re all part of the path we are taking. They are what we will look at in the future. They are what we remember. They are the reasons, they are the excuses, they are the things pushing us to tomorrow. They are the things that get us through the next sunset and sunrise. And those moments when we’re remembering, they’re so bittersweet. They provide so much hope, so much happiness, and yet a sorrow that that was who we used to be. That our thoughts could have been that naive. The moments we go through, they all make up this road. This path. This lane. A lane filled with tears. A lane filled with laughter. A lane filled with time. Time gained and time lost. A lane where our hearts lie, a lane where lies the truth of who we are. A lane that leads to whatever’s next. A lane that leads to whatever memory we relive. A memory lane. A memory lane of forgiveness and peace. A memory lane where there is no regret. A memory lane where the hypothetical has free roam. A memory lane where we could lie forever. A memory lane where we could face our fears. A memory lane where we find ourselves. Where we find our homes. A memory lane where we find the truth… In this lane lie the answers to our past and our future. In this lane lies who we were, who we are, and who we will be.

I don’t know what I’m doing, perhaps none of us do. But the thing we all know to be true is that each pf us was born with purpose. Each of us was born to live, each of us had a story, a path that we could’ve chosen. A life we could have lived. Yet, we all chose this one. One on a world where there’s politics and pain truth and dishonesty, shine and rain. Where there is a UK and a USA, where we ran and where we stayed. A place of gossip, of only you. Of sensitivity and sickness. Poverty and wealth. Love and Hate. Peace and War. But we chose it. We were given a choice, follow the book or pave a path. We just paved ours with a wrecking ball. In doing so, some of us found ourselves, we found that perhaps wrecking balls were our things, while the others, we all knew that was wrong, that it was appealing, that it was our forbidden apple tree. Yet, we stayed silent. We sat back and watched. Because we believed their mistakes to not be our own. Because we failed to think together, we failed to be together yet unique, we thought that you could only have one or the other, we believed that that was truth. That that was the only truth. We gave no time for sympathy or hope, no time for benefit of the doubt, no time for I trust you now trust me. I can’t help but think that maybe this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. We keep mixing ourselves up, changing what does not need to be changed, changing what was never our right to. Changing what was given to us as a gift. We keep lying. We keep confusing our new generation. Keep giving them the wrong ideas. Still, a part of me can’t help but conclude that this is who we led ourselves to become, this is who we fail to change, how we fail to change within ourselves. Our path has never been easy, and we still fail to find our purpose, but we cannot continue to fall backwards in this way. We cannot continue to allow our lives to be manhandled, because although we chose this path we can still change the ships course, we can still keep looking for new turns. For better ones, because although we chose this path it was never truly ours. Now it can be. Now we can finally help put ourselves back on track, help each other become who we were meant to be. Now we can get our lives back.

Control brings chaos and pain, harmony and sympathy. Control weighs us down, almost as if there was a rather large anvil on your chest. Control comes in any shape or form. Control of oneself, of each other, of animals, of science, of space, of our brains, our books, and even of the world. Yet, there is a question to be answered, control, although usually accompanied by retaliation, is necessary? Control, although usually accompanied by loss, is wanted? Us homo-sapiens it seems, actually long for it. Long for no unique thought to pass our brains. We allow politicians and influencers to completely and totally manipulate us into believing that their thoughts were our own. That the deformities our society has created are the definition of unique, of being one- in- a- million. That is the difference. We believe our new world and the things it allows are unique, but the real true men and women of this world were never unique, oh no. They were idiosyncratic. They were intelligent and brave, gracious and had morals. Ethics. They were the true people of tomorrow and never today. They were the type of people who would remind us that the past is history, the future a mystery, and today a gift, called the present. So, change today while we can, they’d whisper. Be idiosyncratic… They’d shout…