Left Behind

Isn't it weird how the smallest most insignificant things seem to bring about the biggest change in us? How the most routine mundane activity can somehow excite the deepest, even life changing experiences. Take for example a friend of mind who decided on her career while sitting on the can. (I said friend). But no I'm not going to ponder the ways in which toilet routine can be life-defining.

Only a few minutes ago, I was browsing through the friendster photos of an old friend of mine (a different one) now studying in New Zealand. And something struck a chord within me. Perhaps it was that she seemed to be so in control of herself and her surroundings. Perhaps it was the amazing scenery around her. Perhaps it was the hot dude with his arms around her. Perhaps it was petty jealousy that she was surrounded by people not in our former clique. Perhaps it was that she was out there in the world with a purpose, a goal, while I sit hunched over a computer oohing and aahing at her pictures.

She's grown and blossomed into an adult and a woman since the last time I saw her while managing to retain her identity as I know it. I seem not to have matured in the least having left secondary school. And yet do I feel my fingers grapple at the last shards of my original self.

A powerful urge for change has just come over me. No longer do routine classes and random pops into the malls sit uppermost in my thoughts. With all that she has seen and done in the past year, I seem not even to have left school. Or am I not worthy of doing so? I hide still behind my mother's apron strings and she ventures solely to explore the boundaries of the world. And finds herself at home in strange places, while I at home pine for familiar faces.

Oh for the sweet simple life of yesteryear. It's heart wrenching to have to watch people in your past change and morphe and take flight to newer heights. But it is worse when you are chained to the ground, struggling to shed the worn skin of the past.