The Drug-like Addiction to the New and Unknown

I often find myself getting a haircut when it's just the length I want it. I often find myself wanting to go home when I'm on my dream vacation, halfway across the world. I want to change my name, move three states away, quit my favorite sport, and then move back home again, just so I can repeat the same exact process. I'm hungry. Hungry for something new and exciting, something a little meatier than what I'm used to. Or maybe all I want is for that meat to alternate between being cooked just right, and giving me the meanest stomach ache of all time. See, I've been in touch with my sanity and lack thereof lately, and I think my heart has ADHD. Not me though; we want different things. My heart tends to yell at me, demanding something. It's a needy little brat sometimes. Yet the second I give it what it wants, it spits it back out at me, a crumpled dollar bill being rejected by a vending machine. I've never really had a best friend. I've been extremely close with people, but never really locked in that sense of commitment. My neck shone bare, as the other third grade girls would wear their shiny heart necklace alliances. One half of the silver heart boasted “Best,” the other bragged “Friends.” If you were lucky, you'd get to join and turn it into a group of three, adding “Forever.” I often wondered if it would still count if I bought the necklace set and then wore all three myself. Society pointed to no. I was never that bothered by it, though. I had my friendly faces in the hall. Ironically, I often found myself having the most connection with my teachers instead. What terrified my third grade self was the last of the three words that hung on the girls' necks: “Forever.” When I thought about my forever, I wanted it to contain faces that I had yet to meet. I wanted unpredictability and constant shifting. I was never into having one best friend. I didn't like all the strings that came with that, regardless of whether they were good or bad. I was never into the obligations of the known, of the expected. Although (surprisingly) more than my fashion sense has changed since then, I still like being string-less. My utter indecisiveness has surfaced time after time, as a boyfriend becomes an ex, then a boyfriend, then an ex, repeating for an entire year. The words “I don't know” like to loop around my head and encompass my heart. Not because I have a lack of opinions, but because I have conflicting ones. I'm on the debate team this year and the hardest person I have yet to face is myself… I get Last Speaker every time. It seems that with all this moving around to different beliefs, styles, friend groups, I got divided somewhere along the way. I think just last week I accidentally left a little piece of me at the bus stop, and the week before, one at my neighbor's house. So whenever a gust of wind comes, everything plays out a little differently. Being constantly and blindly divided often immediately elicits a negative connotation, but in my opinion, it's more worth it. It's healthier. I have covered more ground than a lot of my friends because of my addiction with this drug of unadulterated change. When you close your eyes and throw yourself up in pieces into the air, that gust of wind is what more people should be letting guide them. I have no clue what I will be doing one year from now, let alone three. Truly, I have no clue what I will be doing this weekend. I might just pick up learning Sign Language again. I might just dye my hair blue and hang up Pink Floyd posters on my wall, leather studded gloves and all. It's taken my whole life to accept the fact that I, collectively, am a scattered and shifting animal. I am ruthlessly anxious for everything that the word “new” elicits. Dangerous as it is, scorned as it is, I find consolation in the rhythm of diversity. My heart feels warmed when sealed and stamped in an envelope of the unknown. I will continue to fill my days with rash decisions and blind dates. I will pledge to embrace the rain, but then open my umbrella a few minutes in. For the beauty of contentedness is not in finding one place you're happy and just hiding out there. It's more of a culmination of times and people and feelings that you find with an unexpected gust of wind. I often land with my insides on my outside and my outsides all scratched up, but somehow, for the past seventeen years, I always land on my feet.

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Alissa Mak

Don't underestimate the power of young minds.

Hong Kong, China