After After IB

After After IB

It feels real again. My fingers have life. My eyes have found a light. My breath smells fresh. I’m a feral ghoul reborn. I’ve shedded rotting skin. I’ll never feel this light again, not with the future I’m considering. I’ll tell my daughter I told everyone it was so over, so over, it was so over but your father is an overthinker, just like you. I’ll tell my son this is the grit that he needs to succeed in life – but I’ll save the failed escapades and rocking the boat too many times to count, or the fact I never felt in place in my place. I’ll enthrall him about my exciting life in Tekong Island. 

It feels real again. A great tremendous weight has found its liftoff. I’ve died and lived a thousand times for this stupid diploma. I’ve seen people cry for this piece of paper. I’ve seen people kill themselves over a digit. It reeks of meritocracy. It reeks of reality and it stenches to high heaven pushing the envelope unto eternity. Not even 46 would have been good enough for you. 

It feels real again. I’m at a buffet table with the luxury of choice, and I stand before a pit of corpses. This is my victory, this is my Iwo Jima. I’m disappointed Hamlet never came through for me, but I loved, loved, loved writing that essay, regardless of how much of a nonsensical yapfest it all was. I’ll never stop reading Shakespeare. I’ll go into drama. I promise you I’ll find love. I’ll live out my destiny and I’ll sit down one day visiting my friend living in Osaka with my daughter and son, and I’ll tell them about how brilliant their father was, and how reckless he lived at 18. 

This is a chapter to close, and people to forget, but stories to tell forever. 

18 December 2024