Head in the Clouds

Fifteen. 

What a raw, beautiful age in life. The age when most girls start turning into women; start falling in love and start unearthing ambitions.I did all of that; and a little more. I had never known the harsh reality of life until I was fifteen. It came like a whirlwind and it blew away all the bliss that had accumulated like a cloud above my head.

                                     

Those days of unparalleled happiness when I excluded myself from all social activities by camping in the library. Those days of living in Middle-Earth and Hogwarts. Basically those days when attachments did not mean anything to me. Just those bonds with close family and friends; people you could absolutely trust. There was nothing to fear, no one to hate, because it was all so pure. I had the beautiful ambition of becoming an archaeologist and then some day pen down my thoughts and become a famous writer.

What really happens to childhood dreams anyway? I think they get locked up in a treasure chest, never to be opened again. You sail away from them, like a ship drifting away from an island. Your castles crash down from the clouds. Your mountain of happiness has landslides of misery. 

And then some where, some how, a draught of reality flies in. You're forced to grow up and face the cruel world at such a young age. It's true, you have nothing to lose; no career, no social contacts, no property. You just lose one precious thing - you lose yourself. And you do that so helplessly, while the entire world nods in sympathy.

You're forced to stop living with dreams, and to live with people. Actual people, who are so unpredictable and imperfect unlike your friends inside your head. All your preconceived notions about people start to melt like wax. You fall in love with some people, who mirror the characters in your brain. And these people are inducted into your Mind Palace forever. Then again you meet people, who aren't pleasant, who have lived luxurious lives and are spoilt to a massive degree and people who lie and backstab and betray. And you are forced to hate them, an emotion you weren't capable of, because for some reason even the villains in your dreamworld were so prefect, that you could not help but admire their ruthlessness. 

And you're caught in a dilemma. Should I attach myself to real, solid people or should I be alone? Man is a social animal they say, but I have met people who have lived alone for all their lives and they are still content. Hermits have peaceful lives. Attachment and love, is to your work. Is to your family. And to your friends. Yet, it is not attachment if you don't feel the acute pain when you are separated from them. Pain is not really the best of all feelings; so why attach yourself?

You move in this circle of questions, swirling like smoke inside of your head. You don't know how to console yourself if anything were to happen to your attachments. Work ends when you become utterly incapable and people simply die or leave. What really remains except words? Words inside of your head; words that knit together to form sentences and sentences that pile up in patterns to form stories? If all the toil and attachments in life were to amount to dreams then why did we leave the dream world in the first place?

Questions, and questions about the purpose of life. The end result is nothing but questions. Maybe those who are really lucky, get answers. And those who aren't are simply whisked off to heaven and the moment they land there, they know. They just know.