Isfahan, IRAN – A few weeks ago, I observed something bizarre while traipsing around campus, enjoying a particularly rebellious playlist that seemed quite out of place in my present surrounding. I actually internalized something that I had noticed earlier on but never had I thoroughly thought about it. I was in here and now and it felt genuinely great.
I will explain that.
Last year around this time, I was going through something that now I can describe as a clumsy mixture of depression and existential dread. I spent my time involved in a number of useless affairs – everything that is expected of a 17-year-old high school senior – and I was lost in seemingly endless sequences of disappointment. I thought too much. I worried too much. Everything seemed far out of my control and equally fearsome.
There is not much to say about it. I deliberately did not keep an eye on that time. I waited and meanwhile, gave myself a not-so-neat pixie cut with a not-so-sharp paper scissor that I’ve grown to like so much ever since. There was something freeing about that.
Flash-forward to my big moment in college campus on a biting cold morning. I realized that being in the moment was okay, how it appeared to have been the magical cure and how I had – somehow – managed to acquire it, for I no longer spent my time plotting scenarios that ended up in incredibly cliché ways, instead I lived and breathed in here and now and could only think or imagine as far as the next day.
I think about the person I’ve become during these 365 days. I still am the tall Goth with too much dark attire and fancy earbuds living on toast and cherry jam. Only now I enjoy the thrill of walking downhill, sharing food with others, breaking the stern vows I’d made not so long ago, borrowing the books that are simply meant for me, catching my reflection and at last but not least, knowing that I no longer care even if the people judge.
All I care for now is finding a proper substitute for when I run out of cherry jam.
I like the boredom of being at the moment.
I like it a lot.
Frida Zeinali is a Senior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
