We have oceans left to sail and other worlds to see.
Everyone keeps telling me not to change. ”Stay who you are right now”, ”Don’t let anything change you”, ”Don’t let the media or the industry make you different”, they say. But I never understood it, why is everyone so afraid of change? Change, is the reason to why I go up in the morning. Every night when I turn of the light, I want to be able to say ”I’m not the same person as I was this morning”. Because if I’m exactly the same as 12 hours ago, or two weeks ago, or a month ago, then I’ve just wasted my time on nothing at all. Because everything that matters will change you. Everything that is of any importance at all, will change you. It will make you grow, understand, learn and realize. It will expand your world a little bit, it will take the focus from something else and you will be a little bit different than before it happened. People are so afraid of change and feelings that they avoid the things that matters the most to me. The eyes of a stranger on the tube. If someone’s smiling when they see you, or just says hi. Days of struggle, nights of natural ecstasy and short spontaneous moments of happiness. Crashing at airports because you can’t afford a place to stay. Busking an hour to afford breakfast. Buying a coffee to the homeless man on the street and talking about what it means to exist and to love. Getting drunk on cheap wine and spend the night by the water, singing your heart out to all the people who never got you. What you read and how you choose to remember it. These things change you. These things are what matters to me. Not how much money you get from your 9-5 job or how expensive clothes you can afford.
My goal every single day, is to change. My goal every night is to be able to write a new story, explain a new feeling, come up with a new character. Write about new smells, feelings and colors. You’re not meant to write the same poem two days in a row. So why is everyone telling me not to change?
Lately, I’ve spent all my time explaining myself to everyone around me. I’ve spent nights trying to explain the way I think and my choice to wander and explore. I’ve spent hours under the moon, defending my passion for art and music to my friends and family. I’ve spent hours trying to convince myself that I’m doing the right thing, that I’m living the life I want to live. I’ve spent month after month defending my music, while other people breaks it down. Weeks, trying to convince them that there have to be people out there who will connect with my art, and I’m worth taking a shot on, and please just don’t tell me I’m worthless.
Lately, I’ve spent all my time defending myself, explaining myself and convincing myself and other people who I am and what I do, and I’m tired to the bones of it. I am not a strong person by nature. I am not one of those who are born to be a star and stand up for herself no matter what and be strong and confident. No, I am the girl who turned red while talking in front of my school-class and then ran out ashamed and crying. I am the girl who never dared to trust and have friends, because I was too insecure about everything there is to be insecure about. I am the girl who stayed in my room all day when I was too ashamed to show up. But when it comes to music, it was different. I suddenly lost all my insecurities, all my doubt and I finally felt alive. When I sang, I wasn’t scared anymore, and that’s the reason to why I gave my life to it. Music is still the only thing I never doubt. It’s the only place I feel safe and confident in, and nothing can ever take that away from me. But when people day after day try to convince you that you will fail, that your music isn’t good enough and that you don’t have what it takes. That your life doesn’t make sense and you should get a job like everyone else - you get quieter every time until you have no strength to argue anymore. When you end up standing alone on one side, defending yourself, with almost the whole world on the other side telling you you’re wrong, you slowly lose hope. And that’s what’s been going on.
I found myself alone with this belief, while every one else argues for the opposite, and as the insecure girl I am by nature, I once again turned into that quiet, doubting person who mumbles ”sorry” and ”you’re right”, and once again I did what I did 16 months ago - I packed my bag, took a train to nowhere and everywhere, and didn’t tell anyone. I went to a new city where no one knows me, crashed at a cheap hostel and spent 7 days walking foreign streets, talking to strangers and reading new words and books at the city library. Captured new views and feelings and tried to find some kind of way out of the labyrinth. (One of the books I read was Looking For Alaska, if you’ve read it, you understand.) I think going away into the unknown is the most important thing you can ever do. Do the things you’re scared of, live where you fear to live. This is what matters. Because when you get comfortable in a place, you get habits. You think you know how things should be and you become this robot without a free spirit, and you forget about the Great Perhaps.
I’ve spent so much time explaining and defending my life and music that I forgot why I was defending it - because it gives me purpose. It gives me a heart. It makes me breathe and it gives me something to believe in. And please, promise me this, to never ever spend your precious time on defending your belief. Your own personal belief, whether it is in a God, a religion, a political view or your own purpose for your own life, is something no one can ever take away from you, unless you let them. Don’t ever question someone’s belief, and don’t ever doubt your own. Your belief is yours and yours only, and the day you lose that, you lose yourself.
I am done explaining myself. I will no longer spend my time defending my music. If you get me - you’re my family, if you don’t get it - don’t spend your time trying to take me down because this is my belief and you can’t touch that. You can break my body and my every bone, take away my chance of ever being able to afford my own bed and food everyday, but you can never take away my belief.
