IF I were Bella Swan, I too would have urged my vampire boyfriend to make me immortal at 17 years old. At least, I always thought I would up until this point in quarantine.
When I turned 20 in March of this year, I imagined my body desiccating to the point of mummification; that the sheer weight of age on my soul would start showing on my skin. At 20, I felt like I was too old for all my current habits and hobbies like I should have developed a new, more adult personality as soon as the clock struck 12.
There isn’t a single thing I could put the blame on for my warped relationship with age, but I do think it all boils down to my environment. In books, the main character defeats evil by the age of 13. In TV shows, the main character dates around and meets the love of their life in high school. In movies, the main character peaks in college and the fun ends as soon as they receive their diploma.
The way I saw it, all that is left after acquiring these milestones are a boring nine-to-five job and domestic life. And boredom, according to German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in Studies in Pessimism, is just another form of misery.
As I equated adulthood to inescapable boredom, I entered the Ateneo as a bright-eyed 17-year-old hoping to live as much life as I could. I thought that this was the only stage in my life where I could make mistakes and laugh while doing so. I especially reveled in the nightlife, embracing the sweat of activity like there was no tomorrow.
Amid complete strangers in the dead of night, I never felt more alive, and so I wanted to stretch that feeling to an eternity.
When my friend told me that she wished she was more like me pre-pandemic, I told her that there is no shame in taking it slow, which there isn’t—except time seems to be working against us as my batch is mere months away from graduation. This daunting realization leaves us with nearly nothing left to do but reminisce about the nights we could barely remember and regret the time wasted in quarantine.
That is not to say that everything was perfect. I chased experiences more than I did sincerity. I didn’t say “no” even when I wanted to in the hopes of collecting more rose-tinted anecdotes. I did all the things I did at 17 because I thought I would never have the opportunity to do those things again once I graduated from college.
Because the option to prolong my youth by way of vampire venom was out of my reach, I opted to view life the way Greek epic poet Homer described in the Iliad. According to him, “Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’e doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
That said, Homer’s words no longer resonate with me as they did before. Mortality is not this intangible thing that brings my life meaning. Nowadays, when I think of mortality, I think of my forgetful grandmother who had to grieve anew each time she saw the urn. When I think of mortality, I think of all the funerals I was not able to attend because of the pandemic.
Bodies cannot be buried once they have been turned to ash. Likewise, I cannot go back in time to relive my so-called glory days just because I am too afraid of becoming a full-fledged adult.
But I digress. Hypothetically speaking, had I been turned into a vampire at 17 and abandoned my human life, I would not have experienced the joys of 18, the painstaking uphill climb of 19, nor the daily grind of 20.
I turned 19 and 20 at home, and I have not seen a single one of my friends since on-site classes were suspended. While the lockdowns may have seemingly fast-tracked me into adulthood, aging is not the crime being committed against me.
I may have become an adult against my past wishes, but the quarantine has certainly put boredom into perspective as only a certain percentage of our population can afford to remain at home. And if I become bored, so be it. I simply want to leave college with the newfound acceptance that my life did not end when my teenage years did.
