Anything but Ordinary- Kristiana Reed

The tender age of thirteen and grunge, grime and grey eyeshadow defined me. Pegged me tightly into a hole, type cast and left there to mature. To phase into adulthood with only bangs and black kohl to cling onto. For twenty-four months, Avril Lavigne’s ‘Anything but Ordinary’ lit the fire in my stomach. Fire to fight dainty, vomit inducing butterflies and stabbing pains. Repeatedly, I crooned like a cat over the peril of the ordinary, the heart-stopping tedium of normality and the very life I wish I did not call reality. I wanted to be extraordinary.

 

At the tumultuous age of twenty, the curtain fell on my education, mental health and life’s possibility. Hours were no longer dedicated to day dreaming; about opportunities or victories. Instead, minutes were bottled for ironing, the recycling and my lunchbox. Robotic and rigid, security was the prize; yet it would take no leap of faith to get there. Just machinery. I knew I was ordinary, assured it was okay to be ordinary. Still, any throwback hit told me I could be anything but, ordinary.

 

The threat of aging is marked by payslips, deposits and birthdays. Avril is quiet but the fire she lit is smoking. Wisps of wishing and want, curl seductively in the belly of the beast. A beast and beauty, over stimulated – blogging, reading, listening, writing, tweeting, posting, sharing, playing, talking, loving, cooking. My mind is running; fleeing this unsettled human home, where nothing is savoured or kept for too long. Life, my life, is ordinary yet I feel myself swerving from the straight and narrow; onto a wet track of flattened grass. Many things seem certain yet most things are not. On one hand, I teach, on the other, I wish not. You, I, deep down, we all want to be extraordinary. Anything but ordinary.

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Kristiana Reed juggles writing and teaching English; in both vocations she endeavours to remind people of their self worth and how dazzlingly beautiful the world can be.

You can read more of Kristiana’s writing at My Screaming Twenties