Not a very Happy Birthday After All

It is now officially the beginning of my 22nd year in life. I feel wiser already! (ha-bloody-ha. Not so much to be honest. I still have no idea what the word ‘recession’ actually means. And I only found out on May that my country now has had a different Prime Minister since February.) And the birthday was… well on one hand, it’s the first of birthday celebrations with my family since like what, five years ago? On the other hand, to think that last year I was on a birthday cruise in Darling Harbor, Sydney, while this year I celebrated beneath the rambutan trees at my grandmother’s who happened to have six cats but is absolutely clueless that it’s my birthday.


Regrettably I wish I am seventeen again. Oih, those days when you can eat a pile of fat and not gain a pound. And it was definitely a simpler time, when nobody expects you to figure out where your life is headed and race towards it. Everybody flirts and nobody is taking everything so seriously. I am sometimes jaded by the twenty-something-old community. We all seem to be standing at the career doorway. Any interest in the opposite sex seems to notion a very far-fetched future together, so flirting has now become too much of an effort. A night out of fun consists of movies, bowling or dinner. What a blah. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned finding the things that makes your adrenaline rush? Like road trips that lead to nowhere and takes days. Or going to watch culture shows. Or planning backpacking trips to the must-see places before you die. Picnics at the park. Fishing trips. Taking French classes together. You know, stuff that makes you feel like a person who lives a fulfilling life, instead of letting the waves of the world sweep you in doing things like a billion other people are doing in the same city. The feeling of being herded like sheep in the city world sometimes suffocates me in ways I can’t explain.


At the age of 22 I have now officially belong to the adult group. I am expected to grow up. Fortunately I am here to declare that I refuse to grow up. What does a ‘grown up’ mean anyway? A wise friend once told me that maturity is not about how you act or look. Rather, it’s about how you think and evaluate things that would lead to your own personal happiness. So this year, my resolutions are still the same as my new year’s. Only, I will stop pretending that I want everything that everyone else wants. I really don’t care about where I would go in the job hierarchy in the office, actually. I just want to work at maintaining to enjoy my work. I hope I get to write for a living one day. I want to travel and see everything with my own eyes. I would love to get married some day, of course, but I have decided to settle with the fact that I am not, nor will I ever be, the kind of girl who plans her life around marriage. Rather, I would like to plan marriage around my life.


Okay, deep breaths. I am not stepping in the door of being 22. One foot in, now the other. Tick-tock tick-tock.