It's such a peculiar thing, turning legal for the second time, that is. At 18, you reach the age of consent and yet the braces that support you don't completely weather off. At 18, you're allowed to do certain things, but not everything. About three years later, you turn 21 and you turn legal for the second time. Only now are you actually legal-legal to do almost anything (provided that it's within the law). You may now go to bars. And for other people, at this age you might also be done with college and the real-real world, as they say, becomes your oyster. Unless you're of Asian descent and you don't ever really-really breakfree from your parents thrusts until you have your own family (and maybe not even then). But turning 21 in 2020 is the most peculiar of them all. In the peculiar world-state of COVID-19, being 21 (under General Community Quarantine in the Philippines) meant that unlike your younger peers, you are allowed to go out. Of course, going out in the "new normal" isn't the same-same. Nonetheless it's a peculiar addition to the things you get to be allowed to do after turning legal for the second time. At any case, reaching milestone ages such as 16, 18, 21, 50, etcetera suggest an air of mysticism about them. Whether you're supposed to feel accomplished or different or perhaps get washed over by the utter feeling of change as if magic dust were sprinkled all around you the second you turn these certain ages— I don't know. I doubt anyone would even be able to give you a straight answer when you ask them why they celebrate such dates. "It's tradition," some might say but tradition of who? Tradition made by who and for whom? Nihilistically, they're just just arbitrary dates, a single dot of time amongst the vastness of a seemingly infinite calendar that spans years. As for me, I certainly don't feel any different than I did almost 2 months ago when this whole shitstorm forced us inside our homes. Some people muse that time is irrelevant. Age is arbitrary. Laws are man-made. Milestones are just musings that make up for the truth that perhaps life is truly meaningless, and that purpose is the in-denial pursuit of the search for such non-existent meaning. If fiction was modeled after reality then I'd like to believe that these past few months spent in global lockdown, and however more months we'd have to continue in the same state, is nothing more than just a pocket of time separated from the greater scheme of reality. That these few months were as detached to the common realm as we are to each other, currently separated by an invisible enemy. I'd like to believe that once we get out of this and out our houses, literally— life could just unpause from the time it stopped from on March 9, 2020. It's a musing spoken from a place of privilege, I'm aware. It's an escapist stream of thoughts that ignore the cruel realities of real lives lost. That's why fiction is fiction and reality is reality. But after everything I said... ...Maybe I'm just bitter. Turning 21 was supposed to be fun. Turning 21 was supposed to be celebrated OUTSIDE, drinking, chatting and having fun with the type of people that nihilists hate— the people in your life that make you believe without a shadow of doubt that life, after all, is not meaningless. COVID-19 (that bitch) cleared out the dates in my calendar and made it look arbitrary when it once looked colourful, pockmarked by birthdays of friends, movie dates, coffee dates, and even those big, red, angry marks for dates of deadlines and tests that you wished just never came. Well we did get our wish, didn't we? Somehow. Being 21 in 2020 could possibly mean that you can go outside, what a peculiar permission to be granted by the law but then again, what a peculiar state the world is currently in; what a peculiar way to turn legal for the second time. For as long as I'm concerned, I'll turn 21 when I can finally, properly celebrate turning 21.
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