Its past 2 am, and I find myself in the very same place as I was yesterday, alone with my thoughts on another night wide awake. Maybe if I was still smoking I'd have something to divert my constant deliberation to, yet however, I am overwhelmed with the capacity of information my brain likes to offer me at this hour.

My thoughts aren’t strangers to my surroundings, or humanity, however I have narrowed tonight's episode down to a very familiar thought, which is; how can we live almost every day, trying so hard to prove to our selves and to our country our individuality? We live in a place, that doesn’t encourage self expression or support it for that matter; trying to be "you" has become an endless strenuous saga that is struggling to prevail with time.

Take me as your main example (so as not to harm anyone with my probable politically incorrect English) I grew up in a surrounding where east met west, literally…. So far adjusting through the years and riding the constant wheel of retrograde motion and change, be it; the political, the economical, the media, the internet, the fashion, the style, the good relationships, the bad ones, the travels, the work the drama, the good times and the bad, shaping me into this person I am today.

As I am close to approaching a non-existent quarter life crisis (and apparently, according to a friend of mine, our society is the only society that suffers from this incoherent disease) I find my self confused and torn between the "social" duties as a responsible young female who has-to-do-a lot-of-things-before-a-certain-age, and the wild, rebel that loves to dance and enjoy life….sober.

Call me crazy, but maybe the nicotine helped me overpower those peculiar thoughts, yet however, it is true. Why is it so hard for us to accept the odd? through the years I have seen people flourish into influential and motivating beings I never thought I'd ever get to meet in my life, and through the years I have seen people repress so much potential into being something more extraordinary than what they are, but are conforming to what seems to be the "norm"…. are we scared? Lost? Or just simply sticking to what we know, more like sticking to the safe side?

Or are we the ones that are defying an entire country, an entire philosophy built on prude and prehistoric complexes and an awful innate need to get involved with everyone's life and judge like there's no tomorrow!?

The paradoxes of living in Egypt are endless, however I don’t see my self living anywhere else (yes, with the amount of complaints), and the more rejection I see my country giving me and an entire generation with the same mentality, the more challenged I become to prove my individuality more and more each day.

Yet, at the end of the day… is pure self expression be it through changing your hair color, studying art, playing and singing music, wearing fashionable attire, drinking, smoking, dancing on tables (or dancing where your standing cause there's no room), sitting in a public garden (wearing actual jeans and a shirt), walking from one street to another, partying like there's no tomorrow….that different? When you come to think about it, the answer is no, I think we're just trying to find our place in the world, where we can always say "I lived life to the max!"