In my community, I am one of many. Not in any way unique.
We all were raised in the same religion, with the same values, and the same insanity.
We have all sacrificed too much for our ages.
We have all been around the world.
I am not unique to them. I am just another one.
I do not feel like I ever left my house. I do not feel like I ever had a grand adventure.
Memories are fading and the drudgery of day to day life is wearing my brazen personality down to simple boring lifelessness.
I have pictures as proof, but there is no connection between the person in the photographs and the person looking at them.
She looks like me, but I dont have that sparkle in my eye, or stand in that relaxed pose, or that big smile, or the energized look. She looks fresh, happy, ready to say yes to whatever comes her way.
What has she become? One of those people that let monotony run her over. It acts like water eroding away at the earth. It slowly but steadily crushes dreams and cuts away at general well being.
That is what I have become.
I hide away from it in any fantasy world I can find. I hide away in movies, in books, in daydreams, in board games, in writing.
But it always is waiting for me. Quiet and patient.
Who can I run to to tell me I am not just another person living a boring day to day life?
Who can remind me that I was an adventurer. That I sailed the seas, I rode over hundreds of miles of landscape, I explored places never seen by my eyes before, experienced cultures in their own land.
However, that is not unique. That is not noteworthy. That is nothing special.
That is what I have been told. Because everyone I know has done just that. Then they came back home and forgot that they used to be world travelers. Instead thoughts of mortgages and child safety locks became priority. They know that they traveled, but they have forgotten the self that was.
So, I am just a statistic. I am just another person that needs to accept my fate. Just another person that needs to forget the past, forget their former selves, and get on with bone crushing reality.
But I cant. Try as I might, I just cant forget.

Does this sound melodramatic? I guess I have been reading too much.