MGMT’S Time to Pretend has never made me this emotional, 10 years after its release. The first time I heard it I was a delusional 10-year-old writing stupid notes behind my school notebook, collecting J-14 and Tiger Beat magazines that had Fall Out Boy and the cast of Zooey 101 in it. The year was 2007 and I imagined myself working for Ocean Park as a dolphin trainer, but I came to realize that aquariums practically enslave sea creatures, so scratch that. I then wanted to be an astronaut but I learned that you have to be good at math and the sciences. I loved science; I was a science fiend. But I sucked at it, so scratch it again. Then I wanted to be a pilot. To simply put, everything is ironically against my interests and abilities, so I scratched that one, too.
Weirdly, it struck me dead while I was jogging last night, my Spotify playlist on shuffle. Fate brought me to this realization, I thought. I was just thinking about how dreadful my future would be when the song came and woke me up. Are we really fated to pretend and be dead inside? The first person I thought of was my dad, who’s itching to retire from his job and stay at home instead. I can see that he’s tired (exhausted, even) of his everyday life: travelling almost 2 hours to his office, facing a laptop for more than 10 hours, roaming the office for some papers—the typical office job. And I kept thinking if he had the same thought I had last night, about pretending that life is okay as long as you’re earning enough to buy the needs and wants.
I know that he loves his job, what he’s doing. But does it fall on the same wavelength of who he really is and what he really wanted, as a teenager? Or I’m just too much of a coward to take what’s on the table, that’s why I can’t bear to stop myself from thinking about all this? Everything and nothing is predictable, at the same time. You take this, then it will be two things for you: you’re good to go or you just made the worst decision of your life. Don’t take this and it’s the same thing.
And Real World they’re talking about. I think part of this sudden, unconscious rambling is because I’m turning 20 in a month and a few days, officially loosing the "-teen" in my age. Whatever, I’ll always be a 19-year-old-PLUS, fumbling through…life, or whatever you call this.
I’ve been thinking about the future since January (a.k.a. the month I started counting down the days until I turn 20). I don’t know how many times I cried about how I feel so empty about the future but I’m still holding up, but almost unbearably.
Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do?
Get jobs at offices and wake up for the morning commute?
I promised myself that my life wouldn’t look like those corporate slaves’. I had to be rich enough to buy my dad a watch on a whim, without working for a corporation, or an office. I remember stumbling upon this journal entry, and I'm not very sure if wrote it earlier this year or last year; I had this feeling January last year, and I still brought it with me now, in 2017. Everything is blurred. Anyway, I wrote down, "Money is god and I hate it," and that sentence is just too heavy for me to look at. It's so real and unforgiving it gives me this bitter aftertaste in my mouth every time I say those words in my head.
Basically, the start of the year always mean something monumental for me: it’s either I’m scared of the future OR money.
Strings of thought about the future are mixed up and I’m not really sure anymore of what think of it and how to make of it.
At 13, I made the decision of going to art school. Six years later and I’m nowhere near.
“Well, writing is a branch of art,” some relatives would assure me. “You should go to law school,” they said, and that’s it, make it stop. I would nod to shoo their opinions away. Preferably inside their system, keep their thoughts to themselves.
I don’t want to go to law school.
So I resorted to dreaming of going to UP Film Institute after graduating in UST. But there would always be something in my head that would hold me back—the I Don’t Know, I’m Not Sure voice. So I guess I’ll live in uncertainty; eventually I’ll stop crying at night.
I want my life to be full of unpredictable shit, Frances Ha level, sans the desperate search for a place to live. I’ve been comfortable with the idea of living within the confines of my parents’ home (with my cute brother, whom I’m very fond of playing with) but living alone could so much for me, too. I’d have time and space to creatively grow into the person I want to be.
Navigating my way to adulthood is not an easy feat; I think about how the future would look like for me. Would it be cinematic? Would it look like one of those coming-of-age films where the main character looks over the vast expanse of buildings and just letting everything be? Where would I end up?
I’m sweating and scared of the future and tired of pretending that I got it, I understand, I got it all figured out, where’s my office. But I guess some things are Just Like That. The song is just a prelude to where we are headed. It’s not gonna kill us (maybe). It would be bearable on some days and just pure, scathing hell on most days. And I’d like to think that those (scant) number of bearable days can be the reason why we put up with large numbers of shit that happen to and for us.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I just don’t want my life to turn out into something I’d be ashamed of in the long run: boring, dense and empty with white walls. But I guess sometimes you don’t have to pretend that you’re okay. Sometimes it’s simply just you, over there, just being. As long as you’re sustaining yourself (myself), then everything will be averagely fine, if not totally okay and perfect.
That’s why I made a playlist that calls for help and assurance and validation. Can be terated as a cathartic cry from all the pressure I’m feeling as an almost-adult.
Everything must run its course.
