Whoa! Did I just turn 25?

This year's birthday was hardly typical. I did have a few hours of great people and good music to count for it. Two submissions due, craziness ensued until I came home in the night ready to get to my bed.

I think the whole "OMG, am I turning 25 this year?!" moment happened a long time ago and then nothing yet. But 25 does feel like the age you should be given the medal to have reached. Your parents too should be given a medal, I think. And all relatives and family friends must be banned from asking anything about the most hated 'm' word.

With every year you age in the later 20s , it feels like you grew a decade older as opposed to just a year. It feels like if you don't do all the things you've always wanted to do in your life now, you never will. Which is probably why it is scary to grow older at this point I guess?  don't think I totally subscribe to that thought but I hope after 30, I'm just chilling and I don't really care.

 I must have been high during the new year to think I have no resolutions. I should have just started with, try and learn to be concise and precise. Long winded sentences, half baked sentences, just cannot be excused anymore. God, it has come to my notice after all these years. Not like I haven't said it before but I admire people for having listened to me (or ignored successfully and never let me realize) but just goes on to show there's always scope for improvement. Learning to pick myself up after every fall also seems to be a recurring theme that I might have to consider a late resolution, this semester for sure. 

I also think the whole point about reaching the wrong side of 25 is to start getting your shit together. You are where you are because you wanted to get there, or your actions got you there. Own up and act the part to perfection. That's the advice I'm giving myself anyway.

The funny part is, most songs of Oasis give you such a 80s rock feeling that they hardly feel like they are from the 90s but your opinion is definitely changed when you watch the video. This is a recent discovery, and God, am I addicted to it.

(I found this draft randomly and I wonder why I didn't post it. It doesn't even seem incomplete that I can leave it for the next one. So going ahead and posting it for the sake of the effort that was made)

Privilege

I am a person 
Privileged at that, 
No one hides their kids when they look at me, 
They do not stop me from entering the bathroom that I believe is mine to enter, 
They do not stop me from kissing a loved one in public, 
Because we have the same sex organs, 
Even if I decide to refrain from appearing in public, 
They do not stop me from being with someone I call my life partner. 

I do not fear for my life 
When I exit my house, 
Based on a prejudice that ceased to make sense a long time ago. 

I do not get called names because I don't fit in, 
In a world that they have decided is theirs to own, 
No place is inaccessible to me, 
they have not decided that I am incapable of doing something, 
Because I lack a capability that is apparently their definition of normal. 

I haven't had to flee a place I call home, 
Throwing away every ounce of familiarity to then just not belong. 
I am a woman, so of course, it comes with its own set of caveats. 

However, I still am privileged 
To not even fathom what some of these people have accepted as a way of life, 
What they have gone through, 
What generations before them have gone through, 
How it passes on to how they speak, how they live. 

So go on, tell me, if none of this is you, 
And you still think you are not privileged, 
Then may your life and soul be saved, 
You may have a world that seems perfect to you, 
To couch your happy sense of ego, 
But before you sleep at night, 
In your cozy bed that does not know such pain, 
I hope you feel slightly uncomfortable, 
When I remind you, 
It has come at a cost, 
And that cost is bloody, 
Of lives you cannot count nor account for, 
And hopefully one day, 
They too shall know how it feels, 
What a normal life actually means.