Thoughts on life and love.

Life. Love.

Two words. Eight letters. A thousand meanings.
We were born. We were kids. Teenagers. Young adults. We went to kindergarten and then to school and, then, college. We keep fighting to stand on our feet, get prepared for the void, this uncertain promise that's called "the future". For what reason? Are we sure that the choices, this confusing tangle of choices, regrets, tears, smiles that brought us to this very moment are correct? Have we achieved the wanted feeling of happiness?
But let's not be confused.

Let's start from the beginning. Kids. 8 or 10 years old. For some of us these were the happiest and purest years of our lives. For some other of us, the nightmare began these years. Abuse, verbal and/or physical. Bullying. Abundance. This feeling that no one notices you, you're an invisible person among invisible people. You try to talk, to shout, to scream but no air comes out of your lungs. Your parents are there and, at the same time, they're not. They think you're happy. But little do they know about happiness. It doesn't matter that they're older and in many ways wiser than you. Happiness isn't a lifetime lesson.
Happiness, like love, can't be learnt neither in 1 month, nor in 80 years. Happiness is abstract, like an idea which slowly flourishes in your mind. Happiness is the most delicate flower in the world's most beautiful valley.
I'll return to the idea of happiness. Where was I? Oh yes, at childhood.
There you were. You survived. You found a way, or many ways, to escape into a world that didn't cause you pain. It doesn't matter if it was a fairy tale, an imaginary friend, a pile of books, a collection of poems or a messed up doodling. What matters is that you succeeded. You made it to the teenage years.

14, 16, 18 years old. The Chaos. The mess. So many emotions bursting up all at once and you don't know which one of them to firstly follow. You fall in love. You fall out of love. You want to die. You don't want to die. You cut your arms, your tighs, your belly, your fingers. You regret it. You cut them again. A vicious circle. You find friendship. For the first time in your life you feel like it doesn't matter that your parents don't seem to care about you, because you've found something holier than them, something deeper. Friends.
Friends. What could I really say about them? They can lift you up to seventh heaven and they can tear you to million of pieces. They can make you believe that you're Mother Teresa or a Mafia member. With them you can be anyone and no one simultaneously. You can do everything. Powerful feeling, isn't it? You smoke, you do drugs, you have sex with strangers.
Or you're a good teen. You read, take good grades, dream of scholarships and golden college years. You're loyal to your first love and sex before marriage isn't an option.
I don't blame you. I think I was a good girl. I didn't get drunk, my grades were good, my parents knew all of my friends.

From time to time, a thought crosses my mind. That I didn't make the most out of my teenage years. (I'm currently 17 years old.) I didn't cry much. I didn't laugh much. I didn't act crazily enough.
I didn't climb a mountain, do bungee jumping, kiss a total stranger, sleep for 2 days, go out naked, run away for a week, buy 50 books at once.
I don't know. It may sound strange or weird, but I feel old and young. Like I've lived my whole life, like there's nothing else to see. But I also feel young. Weak. Vulnerable..