Do you ever take a really deep breath, just to make sure you still can? It's one of the ways I remind myself I'm still alive. Still kicking. I always wondered why people said that, "Still kicking." It's always said so dryly, as if there's a better alternative to literally being alive. Funnily enough, the alternative is to kick the bucket. I did a bit of research and it refers to the notion of when you stand on a bucket to hang yourself, you kick it to finish the job. So in a way, "kicking it" is an odd way of saying you haven't finished the job yet. I guess that makes sense. But it doesn't really explain why people say it.
When I think of that phrase, I usually imagine an older person. Looking off into the distance, with bitterness on their face. "Still kicking." Usually a telltale of a someone mentally removed from their youth. A little too comfortable in their mortality. As older people tend to be. All of my grandparents have always been very casual with the idea of their impending deaths. They had all already passed 50 before I was born, and the ones who remain spend their days in a quiet routine. Praying and celebrating with the time they have left. I've never heard "still kicking" from their mouths exactly, but I doubt that's a common phrase in Nigeria. Instead, I've heard "still standing" or "still active" or some Igbo idiom teaching me to cherish my elders. There is no doubt gratefulness in them for the years they've been granted. But on some level, they acknowledge their time is done. They've shifted from hard working providers to cared for spectators in their families, waiting out the gift of time.
Out of all the gifts I've ever received, time is most definitely the oddest one. It's miraculous how it even got into my hands in the first place. So many variants of my being have fought to get here, so how I won is a mystery for the universe. I wish this fact made me grateful for it, but as much as I say I am, I really don't act like it. I've spent so much of my life wishing for redos or reverses or backtracks. Which is so odd. I'm 20 years old. There's at least a good 50 years ahead of me yet I feel so deep into life already. It's so hard, reminding myself that there is so much left for me still. The love that feels like the end of the world today, won't even hold a candle to the love I'll feel tomorrow.
You know I started this blog when I was 14. I would've thrown a fit if I saw how my life would be in 6 years. I hated science in middle school and wanted to become a full time writer. Seeing as I just failed an exam for linear circuits and systems, that didn't happen. And In a really weird way, I hope that my life at 26 makes me throw a fit too. I hope my mindsets change. I hope my circle grows. I hope my body grows. My skills change. My interests shift. My focus narrows. Because well, that's all you can do.
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