When I was 15 I was at the zenith of my rebellious phase. I raged against everyone and everything: My parents, my teachers, organised religion and on many occasions, even my friends, whom I regarded as rather naive and in need of mass herding. I did everything a human being was not supposed to - at least according to a few popular ancient books.
My emotional cornerstone was a selfishness so ingrained that it made everyone around me nothing more than mere props in my continuing tragedy (the tragedy was my belief, to all around it was a rather farcical comedy). You see I expected to be dead by 30. So, in many ways, 15 was also the crest of my 'mid-life crisis'.
Now, I'm 32 and staring a whole new problem in the face. I have outlived my life, and my brain is getting used to the fact that I may be around for a while longer. My heart, however, is not. It pines for the heady days of youthful abandon and magnificent risk.
I have come to understand that with age comes responsibility (a word I abhor till this very day) and with responsibility comes sacrifice. My selfish gene has been forced into hibernation.
But I was never supposed to be here…in this time. My entire life before my third decade was geared to meet an impending death. When it didn't happen, my habits lost focus, and reality took over. Now I have to budget, save money, and make sure my woman, three cats and my dog are taken care of. How the mighty fall: From the derring-do of a misspent youth to the cloying boredom of adulthood.
I long for my mid-life crisis to return and give me an excuse to get back to my errant ways. Only what mid-life is this? Will it mean I live to be 64, losing my hair, many years from now; I refuse to end up like McCartney's protagonist.
Yesterday, as I sat on my front porch, with the morning sun warming my cats. I looked down at my dog, lying at my feet, and wondered why I wasn't raising hell in some dive half way across the globe, with a bunch of loose women and loutish blokes.
Yet there I was, drinking coffee and thinking about what the carpenters could do today. The telly blared the inanity spouting out of Sky News, and my girlfriend asked if I had seen the toothpaste. I looked directly into the sun, and felt the retinal motes spring to life. So this was it. This was what it all came down to: Toothpaste and coffee.
Sometimes I find myself looking at old photographs, of a time that has long since passed. I've squirreled them away, so that I may bask in them during moments of silent reflection, when the responsibilities are asleep. They show MY life, not theirs, nor anyone else's.
I will put on music from my past (it's almost always Neil Young's Powderfinger) and open up a bottle of whisky, and for the next few hours I return to the past. And in it are all the faces that will never see again, and they're all smiling. And we talk, just like we used to. It's a place where judgment fears to tread and life begins anew. It's a place I one day hope to return to for good.
My brain loves my present; it's my heart that I'm worried about. And there's no telling what it will do to get its way.
