Tower and Town, November 2015 (view the full edition)Life ItselfGood luck is what they said. Good luck cards are what they sent. Good luck is all he is going to get, they thought. The realisation of it all only hit me when I walked into the exam room. Is this really how planned life is? To be chosen to do a certain thing, to be routed towards a certain university, to know you will be living to wake up every day to try to fulfil your potential? How inhumane everybody has become, to be only thinking about money. Because that's all it comes down to, in the end. It shocks me when people say, I can't wait to grow up. They aren't aware of how precious life is. The even sadder part is that they will be gone without realising that life itself would have been so much better if they had truly lived it. I think about life itself a lot. Whether I am making the right decision about studying, and if maybe one day I could settle down...even make a family. Or if I have wasted all these years of school, when I could have been somewhere that would have made me so much happier. But what would make my life worth living for? What does the expression 'I want to be free' actually mean? Because let's face it, it doesn't mean to travel the world, or to simply do whatever you want without fear of rules. No...to be 'free' is to get rid of all the things that you don't want in you. To escape the physical and emotional brain that controls you. But how am I meant to do that? In the dining room, my parents sit impatiently in front of me, staring at the simple piece of paper that will determine my whole life. Mother starts to fidget; Father starts to drum with his fingertips. I start to sweat. They implore, demand and command me to open the envelope, but right now, I just don't know what to think. It's not what I wanted. I wanted to feel better about myself, but instead, I feel nothing. My mother is crying: 'I knew you could do it!' she chants. Father beams there before me, the happiest man alive. And I want to feel proud of myself for getting all those A*s, but in truth, all I feel is emptiness. Why can I not be like everybody else? I want to be happy. I want to be free. Kate Davies |