Age.

Age is crawling up my skin, unleashing itself as the years glide by like a nonchalant stranger.

The edges of my features are sharpening thanks to fatigue and long nights as such, frantically typing out my thoughts at 3am before they drift away in the wind like dandelions catching their ride on a passing breeze. My cheeks are no longer cheeks but flesh upon brittle bones.

Writings are merely thoughts that I manage to grasp ever so slightly, then tweaking them to sound less like depressing prose. Simply because this genre of chatter is not easily digestible. Not marketable they say.

Be happy. Smile at the camera. Blog about happy, inspiring things.

Chatter chatter.

I am who I am. I get extremely queasy when people introduce my online persona instead of who I am as a person. I hold Bachelor Degrees and sit in an office everyday punching keys on my keyboard. My numbers do not define me. This is not the only thing I do. I received doubtful looks during job interviews that question my ability to work in an office environment just because I own a blog and have been making a living out of it for the past 7 years.

Some of us have personal lives and do other stuff other than blogging. Do not be quick to judge. We are just like you. We are humans with feelings, individuals who go through our everyday lives doing typical or not so typical things. Happy bubbly smiles may be cover-ups for our heartbreaks and frustration. We too, get along with life like you do. We age like you do, and it shows even more evidently in these pictorial documentations.

You track our progresses and milestones as we mark them in our mental calendars. We are like friends who have yet to cross paths, and you watch my growth even though I cannot watch yours.

How intimate this is. 

"You look like Mummy." Such a strange thing to reconcile myself with.

But still. Yes, I do. And age is like an honest friend who will not lie to render some comfort. It scares me, how rapid my growth has been through the years. Age. You see it in the fine lines on your face and the way you treat the people around you. How you see the good and bad in people, and the way you react to situations. It shows in the way you speak. I recently read this quote that resonated deeply with me.

"Maturing is realizing how many things don't require your comment."
Thank you, Tumblr. You are pretty inspiring at times eh.