Life hits different as you age. When you are a teenager, facing life for the first time on your own, with all the privileges, you start to feel like you need to pick everything apart. You are sad because everything is unfair; authority figures are not as tolerant and understanding as you want them to be; you are easily agitated by injustice.

Then, you are in your twenties, bursting with life. You understand everyone is an arsehole, and people have a crush on your youthfulness. You tiptoe around responsibility, go through countless trial and error situations, break your heart, and encounter your first (serious) suicide thought.

Mid-twenties strike you with the stark realization that you cannot blame your parents because, for them too, this life was a trial and error, and you perhaps are one of the errors they do not want to admit.

It feels like a rollercoaster-like drop when you know you are 30. You find new meanings to missed chances, analogies about the time running out, losing your friends, faking a smile, being in muddled relationships while juggling personal preferences for the sake of sanity, and loneliness.

Then you forgive your parents and take things into your control because you learn the word acceptance. That your life had always been your responsibility and everyone else, including the people who raised you, were trying to fit in and belong, and they have little clue about what is in store for you and them.

In a way, the tragic beauty of life is what makes it unique. You cannot prepare for it. You live it, jumping through hoops–all of them. We all live the same life, yet we all live it differently.