When I was a teenager, I was part of a group not only alternative, but completely different form the so-called Alternatives. We genuinely loved alternative music, not because it was different from the mainstream but because it resonated with our souls i.e., we were depressed, rebellious teens with issues. We dressed in black, partied at weird, mysterious hangouts…popped acid, swayed to freaky music in a dark club with black walls, decorated with neon dayglo demons and of course…a hidey hole under the stairs with an antique dentist chair…
What made us different? Well, we had a passion for literature, from the legend classics like Tolstoy or Tolkien to the cult Beatniks like Ginsburg or Kerouac to new journalists like Capote or Wolfe. We were young and still believed one day we will be poets, writers, philosophers, artists…. Some Friday nights we would spray paint our poetry on buildings scheduled for demolishment. It was symbolic of course (I know, teen melodrama and existential angst galore🙄) of our own fragile existence and had to be on a building that would seize to exist…Ah, to be young again. I remember excitedly telling my mom, “I am 18 and absolutely everything and anything is possible…it feels like the world is in the palm of my hands”, dancing around her in the kitchen! She of course knew what I did not then…and laughed amused while silently shaking her head. I decided right then and there that I will show them, life is what you make of it! I enrolled in University, studied languages, journalism and ended up pursuing Phycology. I was working nights, going to class in the day and doing voluntary work in my free time at a psychiatric institution. I was busy seizing the day to the extreme – Carpe Diem! Our group of friends always had the habit of quoting Descartes when we greeted each other; “I think, therefore I am”. Well in those days…I WAS
That was until my mother decided to drop dead on the kitchen floor and I came to understand her amused laughter on that day I claimed the world as my oyster. You see when she passed away, I had to quit my studies to work full time in order to help my dad. There was no time for voluntary work or poetry and pretty soon, I got caught up in the mundane existence of being a mother and wife. Shit happens. Things change. Life goes on…as it surely did for every single friend in my group. We all ended up living the adult life, drowning in routine and responsibilities. Today I’m thinking of my mother’s amused laugh that day, and I know she was thinking whether she should tell me that I have always been wrong. In the real world where philosophers and poets don’t live, everyone knows it’s actually, “I am, therefore I think”
