Liberty

And so it is ended. My time in INTI is finally over. I’m kissing that little damned town in the forest goodbye, and I could not be happier.

As some sort of a farewell-cum-graduation “celebration”, last weekend I went out and had the most wonderful time in the world with the people I most treasure. There was drinks of course, jokes and insults thrown all over (most of which were directed at me!), there was plenty of laughter, plenty of jokes and chatter, a lil’ serious talk here and there, and lots and lots of FUN.

It was lovely.

I got to be exactly who I was, and who I wanted to be: brash, buoyant, sappy and emotional, happy, relaxed, talkative, insulting, sarcastic, nostalgic, and at times, even insensitive. It felt wonderful, all the more so when no one was annoyed or irritated with the things I said or at the way I behaved. Everyone was fine with my many eccentricities.

People accepted me for who I was. It is a wonderful sense of freedom unlike any other. Free, to do or be as you are. Free, to be blunt, to be honest, and to be frank. Free, to speak one’s mind, to blurt it all out knowing that you will not be persecuted for it. Free to do so without fear of repercussions. Free to do all this, knowing that they are with you not because of what you can offer/provide them, how you look, or what they can get out of you, but because you are who you are.

The chains of academia, of ‘social duties’, of fitting into a community by self coercion -these chains I am no longer bounded by. I can now be free to be who and what I am -and that is exactly what I will do. Sod conformity, I want no part of it. I will be as quirky, as stubborn, as arrogant and as brash as I so choose. I will be me. And if that is stupid, if it is detrimental to my social life, or even to my life as a whole, then so be it.

No, I shall be pretentious no more.

Give me freedom, give me liberty, or give me death!