JUST ANOTHER MONOLOGUE OF A MODERN KID

@A_21st_CENTURY_KID

What makes a 21st century kid? A phone? A MacBook? An Instagram profile at the age of 10? I still do not know what really makes a '21st century KID'... I am a 21st century kid myself.. Do I suffer from depression..? I do not. Insecurity..? I do not.. Then why do I not know what makes me ... ME ... US...

We have nothing settled. Settled in the sense .. Our future.. our lives .. Happiness.. even cheap thrills. We have nothing settled. Why you'll ask.

We did not even lead a settled childhood amidst Nucleated families, pandemics and political breakthroughs. And you ask why..

She was also a kid born in early 2000's.. Grown up in a nice house with gardens and big trees with a stream nearby.. that was her favorite place actually... The Stream.. with its bubbling clear waters with the skies in it. She was a really happy kid. She had everything .. Her toys . Her fairytales. Her own little world where she lived with her imagination as her Tumbledown Shack. But time doesn't stop. She grew up.. Had to start school.. She was a toddler by then.

One fine morning .. Her mother came into her room.. it was a Fall morning.. her wet hands cold from the cold morning breeze woke her up as soon as she touched her forehead ...

She woke up as usual but looked around her room and found it unusually empty.. She looked up at mother and she said 'We're moving..' She had an idea about this cause she had overheard them talking about this matter but had had no idea it was this soon. She did nothing !.. The things she had to do before she left . And now she had no time. They had to leave within 2 hours. .

She left the house. Went near the brook .. the waters were as clear as usual .. the trees above them. She took her little playbox and buried it under a huge mango tree in the garden hoping to return one day . She glanced at the brook , the trees, her heart was falling apart but she was too young to even realize what that choking feeling in her heart was. She turned around.. The mango tree called out to her ~

"You'll come back to me right..? You'll come back and ride your swing on my arms right..? You'll not forget me right ?"

She turned back tears rolling down her cold cheeks "I'll come back."

After that 15 years went by and when she finally went back there nothing was the same. She went back in search of her lost childhood but all she found was the left out root of the cut down mango tree and an apartment where the brook used to be. She was now a child with a childhood which she can visit only in her memories.

Never mind. She has other things to take care off. Her future, her life as a citizen, her life as someone alive. She hid it inside of her. She now understood the stories of her grandfather when they had crossed the border and come over to get settled away from their birthland. They had chances to return but they did not.. she never understood why. But now she herself could not return to her Little Mango Tree.

She lived her life.. Smiling .. Playing .. Growing a little more each day. People came and went in her life. She hoped to find friends like the ones she heard stories of.. from Elders. But she did not. She did not find any likeness between the world she faced and what she heard of. Being a child in a world where phones are the real friends and social lives are seamed inside Social Medias her little heart which grew up amidst stories of group of friends running endlessly through open fields.. found itself completely lost and shuddered. Here if she ran in open fields she'll be judged ; if she played innocently by herself she'll be called self-minded ; if she talked to strangers keeping an open mind they'll just ditch her and leave. Without a second thought. Strangers just leave. Well they always left.. she thought.. her family left her all alone in a city to grow up why would strangers be with her? By left does not mean that she lived alone.. NO! She lived with everyone , she did have a social media account .. hundreds of followers.. everything that a supposed 21st century kid is supposed to have.. But inside she was all alone.

Because she loved people. Real people. Happy people. People: kids of her age who acted like so.. Who did not have trust issues or depressive, mind-melting attitudes which she despised. She lived in an age where the generation before us think that we have everything but actually nothing. Every kid around her screamed about being depressed, have trust issues and relationship problems whom she knew that had none. They were just faking it. She knew they were. Show had priorities here. Emotions did not. The world thought about relationship goals in tiktoks but actually they did not even know how to truly keep a person nearby. Kids her age who were supposed to be the jolly bubbly teenagers that we are shown , they are not that. They think shouting around words like they are depressed and the world around them is toxic is cool. Being depressed is a trend in her age , when all she wanted was a happy place to live in. She tried. Tried a lot to make the kids around her understand that THEY WERE ENOUGH. THEY EXISTING , BEING AROUND HER , TALKING BICCKERING WAS ENOUGH. BECAUSE THEY WERE HUMANS. But they did not understand. Because they enjoyed the negativity they were living in, they were happy being sad. They said you won't understand cause you are not in our shoes.

But she did not want them to understand. She did not want to share her pain. Her loneliness , sadness , she just thought that the world is already in enough of a dilemma to take her pain in. Again . She just wanted to share the happy side. She wanted to be a sunflower amidst a field of weeds. Her attitude changed to the people around her. Atleast from outside they thought it did. Cause she had to live, not like the depressed soulless kids around her, she had to live like HER. She did not want to let that sunflower die and be a weed. She had to be a sunflower and more. She was desperate. Inside she still is a kid who loves brooks and books , she now just pauses a little before opening her arms.

Society did not change. They changed a person by themselves , they put their opinions on her , their insecurities on her little shoulders .. she was only 17. Society started judging her just because she was different . She did not go with the flow the world went after, she stayed on her own. But was that wrong?

To be a sunflower among the supposed second Great Depression phase going on after The 1930's? She did not know. She did not answer the question either. She just started to be a shoulder to the people around her , who really need a shoulder to cry upon. But did it make people not leave? Did it not break her heart? It did I guess. But she won't share her pain. She had sworn to herself that she won't. The world searched high and low for reasons to bring her down , they did not like the sunflower that she was. But she had learnt that being sad would not really help any part of her. She would stand for herself .. She was enough for herself . Loving and cherishing herself as she was , was what the world really needed. Society was unjust to her , but she was not. She tried and still tries to the point where she would not regret her existence. She does not like the society she lives in.

But when this Mr. Society asked her "What are you ?"

'A mink blanket in the cold I suppose...'she replied.