A Life Worth Fighting For

One of my favourite songs, one that I have listened to for years, is Disparate Youth by Santigold.

For years, I loved the melody. I loved the feeling of the song without necessarily thinking too deeply about the words. But recently, I found myself listening to the lyrics differently.

“You know we want more.”

“A life worth fighting for.”

How apt.

I do want more. And, perhaps more importantly, I have a lot riding on the fact that I get there. There are people who have bet that I will fail, and so, in some ways, I feel like I have to win.

I don’t want to whine and whinge too much, but no one really tells you how difficult life can become once you get into your mid-twenties.

I used to pride myself on being able to speak to the people in my life about what I was going through. There was always an open line of communication. I knew that, whatever happened, there were people I could talk to.

And that is still true.

But the older I get, the more I realise that everyone truly has their own lives to carry. Their own fears, relationships, children, work, responsibilities and struggles. It’s not that I was an idiot before and didn’t understand this. I knew it intellectually.

I just didn’t understand it in the way that I do now.

There is a difference between knowing something and finally feeling the weight of it.

The realisation that follows is that, in a very real sense, I am alone.

Not in a “woe is me” kind of way. I don’t mean that I have nobody. I mean that I am ultimately the person who has to get me through my life.

If I don’t work, I don’t eat. If I don’t study, and I fail, people can tell me they are sorry, they can comfort me, they can love me — but they cannot carry the emotional burden for me in the way that I perhaps once imagined they could.

And that is a very eerie feeling.

Because if I slip up, there may not be anyone standing next to me to catch me.

I can’t make too many mistakes. I can’t afford to lose another job, whether it is my fault or simply the result of life throwing another curveball at me.

There is something terrifying about realising that the consequences of your life are, ultimately, yours.

Perhaps this is also why I now understand, in a way I never could before, why people become dependent on substances or other forms of escape. I have never chosen that path, and I don’t intend to. But I understand the desire to temporarily free yourself from the mental pressure of having to keep going.

Life is unpredictable.

You can plan and plan and plan, and somehow still end up somewhere you never expected to be.

And yet, perhaps that is what growing up really is: learning that you cannot control what happens to you, only what you do next.

So, in the famous words of Santigold:

“A life worth fighting for.”

That is what I will keep doing.

No matter how many curveballs are thrown my way. No matter how much my body aches and my mind feels exhausted. No matter how abandoned I feel, or how strange the circumstances become.

I have to walk through the fire to get to the next level of my life.

Maybe I will have to advocate for myself when I wish someone else would do it for me. Maybe I will have to pick myself up when I wish someone else could carry me.

But I will keep going.

Because I want more.

And I want a life worth fighting for.