I’m twenty six years old. As someone gently reminded me not that long ago, it’s still ridiculously young. And yet old enough to be able to drive, vote, buy cigarettes and alcohol, get married and divorced, have children… It’s an undistinguished age, untelling, neither an indicative of maturity nor an excuse for irresponsibility. Maybe an age of quarter life existential crisis of some sort, but then, isn’t life in its entirety some kind of existential riddle in itself?

I’m twenty six years old. Still young, and yet at times I feel like I’ve lived several different lives and have aged without actually getting old. And now I’m starting to notice the first signs of actual aging. Like the first gray hair. Very fine lines around my eyes that are hardly visible, but there nevertheless for me to know where the first wrinkles are going to appear. I no longer seem to have adequate amount of energy to rush through the day juggling a million of tasks without any sign of tiredness and exhaustion. I can no longer survive getting only four hours of sleep during the night. I cannot go longer than four or five hours without having sufficient amount of food. But apart from those physical signs, other things have changed as well. I have mellowed. Significantly. Fast paced environments that used to give me highs make me dizzy and disoriented now. Schedules and deadlines that I once lived on make me now cringe. I am no longer willing or able to handle stress and intensity in any aspect of my life. I’m burnt out on drama. It all appears to be unnecessary fret, meaningless noise and ado. I’m tired. And I know I’m getting old, not older, not only because I seem to have gotten used to the slower, quieter pace, but because it seems like I will no longer be able to go through what I have already been through, and that I can no longer afford to make the mistakes I already made once, in the past. These things are starting to have a toll on me. I’ve grown protective towards myself and my well-being. It seems that all I want these days is peace of mind and sense of normality – the very concept I am having a hard time finding definitions for. Maybe what I’m trying to describe by this normality may appear as plain indolence for someone else, or mundaneness for another. But given my past, where nothing but the early years of childhood came even close to resembling “normal” no matter how lose you set these boundaries for defining normal; where everything was complicated, burdened, disturbed, fucked-up, stressful and strenuous, it is only natural to want that one thing that I have been deprived of, right?

My otherwise happy and unclouded childhood was interrupted by troubled political, social and economic events that my country underwent after the collapse of the Soviet “Empire.” My early adolescence was spent in loneliness and fear and hiding the feeling of loss and grief for my father. My college years were all about growing bitterness and apathy. It was one big disillusionment, years in school, because I was old enough to openly see the reality as it was, to openly reject and criticize it, and yet not old enough to be able to deal with it with the knowledge and maturity of an adult, and more importantly with less destructive, and healthier ways. Granted I was a product of overly idealistic parents, raised on the only religion they believed in, that of ultimate human goodness and universal values of morality, it was easy not to get disillusioned. I tried to find some kind of salvation in my marriage. I grabbed on to it like a drowning at a straw, as a desperate attempt to save myself from dreaded cynicism and apathy, without having the foresight to see that my very salvation would grow into source of depression and even greater destruction. There was nothing normal about that marriage, and I am equally guilty for contributing a considerable share to its insanity.

Troubled and interrupted childhood, painful adolescence, disillusioned youth, broken marriage, broken faith, bitterness, callousness and subsequent apathy –I’m not listing all of this to evoke some kind of pity or compassion - in fact, my life hasn’t been worse than that of millions and millions of people that once lived and are living now. I know that I am far better off than many others. I am merely trying to make a point, first and foremost to myself that it is understandable to want to have things that are normal. To want to be normal. To want rest, and peace and quietness for at least a little while longer.

I can not afford another broken marriage. I do not want to go through life from one failed and disastrous relationship to another. I do not want to live in the humiliation of poverty and deprivation if not in economic sense, at least in moral sense of pride and dignity. I no longer want to feel disabled by another mental or physical disorder. And i no longer want to try and build yet another life from scratch... These things are starting to have a toll on me. They are. And I’m tired. And somewhat lost.

Part of me wants to simply give in to this current state of indolence and serenity. It’s probably the first time in many years that I have felt so peaceful, to undisturbed, so quieted and humbled. Part of me knows that I could be happy like this, living like this, taking care of my humble little needs, taking it day at a time, a moment at a time. I could be happy in Richmond. I could make Richmond feel like home, even if I were to end up living here on my own. But then, the other part of me knows that it’s not really an option. Giving in is not an option. Not at this point at least. Not until I’ve tried to be happy at another place, in another mindset…And only after having experienced something other than this, something different than this, but still normal nonetheless, only then I can make a legitimate choice and a conscious decision to come back to the quietness that Richmond is for me now.

I say I’m happy now. Perhaps I’m confusing the concept of happiness with a glass of orange juice in the morning and a back rub at night, and perhaps all there is to them is joy and pleasure and comfort of ordinariness. I don’t seem to mind it at all. In facts that’s one of the few things that seems to make me happy these days. And what is wrong with the idea of wanting an ordinary life anyway?

I’m not sure where I’m trying to get with this… I still catch myself having to hold back the urge to simply spill it all out and let the daylight see what really is on my mind. Or maybe I let myself get lost in these overly long sentences with overlapping clauses so that I don’t have to say what otherwise could be said in one simple sentence, without even a single subordinate clause.