Expectations were high post 2007. Life was going to be fucking fantastic.
I was going to have the best year ever. Work hard at college, get into medschool, get my First Solo and be well on my way to finishing my Private Pilots License. I was going to celebrate my 18th birthday with my closest friends on the back seat of a limo as we drove from bar to bar tearing up the city. All doable things that should have happened.
But should is a bitch of a word. Insidiously it eats away at you until reality becomes just too damn hard to deal with and you crumble.
And as you crumble, all the "Shoulds" snowball and then one day, when you know you really should be booking that limo, you're sitting on a bed in PICU as a very friendly, but very large, male nurse offers you a little cup of medicine.
Nothing goes as you expect, or as it should.
My expectations of what would happen today were that I would be still wearing my suit as I woke groggily in my bed, with an empty bottle of beer on my bedside table, having to recover from the best night ever. I may or may not have been bruised, from calling my very anglo-saxon taxi driver Rangit all night. I would have messages on my phone wishing me happy birthday and saying thank you for an awesome night of drunken debauchery. I would spend the day with my family. Then be phoned by all my reletives in South Africa, who I miss every second of every day.
I'd chugg down a blue powerade, and my hang over would vanish. Then I'd spend my last week studying my ass off, ace the exams and be all set for a great year at Monash University.
Now, my 18th birthday being nearly over I'm sitting here with the flu, writing a blog post.
My phone has not recieved a single message.
My suit is still on its hanger.
Only my grandparents called. I was forced to explain that my flight medical has been revoked and I'm repeating my last year of college, to the people who've always had the most faith in me.
There was no Rangit. Not even a party.
I could talk about the causes of all of this, but that's not the point.
Nothing ever works out as you want it to.
My expectations have been stomped on, lit on fire, kicked in the crotch and sold into sex slavery to a flop sweating arab man.
If I could I'd delete the word should from my vocabulary.
1 comment:
Fuck, it's been one of the shittiest years for a lot of people, it seems. Especially for you - having your hopes and dreams of going to med school, and enjoying your eighteenth with style, torn away and dashed on the ground... just goes to show that life can really fuck you over.
But, next year, I assure you that we're going to try and make up for all of this shit, and have that best year of our lives with whoever, and whatever's left. I guess it'll be a second eighteenth for you, come this time next year.
To put it short, I give my condolences. As you probably gathered, I'm rather empathic at the moment.
- N.
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