#89 - My Life, Not Yours

Today’s words: Fund, Top, Exultant, Mundane

Word count: 384

Completion time: 19 minutes

Summary: If you haven’t figured your life out when you’re ‘supposed’ to...who cares? Live life on your own terms.

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So, I’m lying here on the top bunk, one semi-bare leg poking through the wooden bars and my eyes are closed, imagining a future where, “What do you want to do with your life?” isn’t a phrase that exists. Nor does, “What do you want to be when you’re older?” “What university are you going to?” “What is your dream for the future?”

I inhaled, squeezed my eyes together tighter, and exhaled through my mouth. My life was mundane, fruitless, a dead-end...well, that’s what my relatives seemed to think.

“So, Emily,” my aunt’s high-pitched, whiney voice would begin, “what career would you like? You must be sick of that dull nine to five by now.”

“Oh, I dunno,” I beamed, exultant and carefree, “maybe one that involves me slapping that smug look off your face every time you decide that your voice is worthy of the same air that I breathe. You think someone would fund me for that? Cause I would gladly do that ‘til the day I die.”

Okay, I didn’t really say that; instead, I smiled sweetly, said, “it’s not so bad,” and walked away.

I turned my body so that I was on my right side and drew my legs up to my torso. I had just turned eighteen years old and already my life was deemed pointless unless I had some big goal in mind. I wasn’t a football player, or a contestant on Deal or No Deal who aimed for a certain amount of cash, I was an eighteen year old girl who had the rest of her life to decide what did and didn’t suit her.

Why should anyone care that my life wasn’t very exciting right now? Why should my parents look concerned when I say that I might give university a miss? Why am I made to feel guilty for not having my life planned out like a complex flow-chart?

What if I liked the way that my life was now? My job wasn’t very exciting, but I loved my co-workers, the money wasn’t bad, and I painted as a hobby...most importantly, I felt happy.

My eyes fixed themselves on a few university prospectuses that my parents had gotten for me, and I closed my eyes again.

Just...let me decide what’s important for me, okay?