Friends,

Have you ever sit and wonder where youth has gone? 26 years of my life, I don’t wanna move on. I wanna be stuck. I wanna be forever a child. I know I sound very selfish, immature and all that. But sometimes I think I WANT to be immature. I don’t wanna grow up.

I remember vividly my days as a student, mostly in high school. Those days were carefree. Those days were light. And I embraced that lightness. But as days go by, my stage in life goes further and further, I left those pieces of lightness and move on to heaviness. And I didn’t like it.

I guess that's why I keep running away.

After I graduated from university, I worked for a bit. I enjoyed work. Thanks to the good company, the best boss and awesome colleagues and friends. But the emptiness lingered. The longing of being somewhere else and be who I really want to be was unbearable. I just felt like I was missing out and that life was happening somewhere else. So I decided to take a small step forward, or backward. I decided to be a student again.

I enrolled in a language school in Taipei and tried to learn mandarin. The plan was to stay for a year and see where it's taking me. Well, nowhere. I'm back to square one, Jobless and hopeless. I spent my days in Taipei being a student as a status. I enjoyed the privilege. Of course, starting a new life wasn’t easy but after a few months I got used to it. What fascinates me about being a student is the lightness. Now I know you might say it's not, but for me it was. I know I was corrupt but at least I was happy. Bear in mind when I say happy, I mean HAPPY. Truly happy. Not happy-happy like what the Singaporeans like to say. I met new people, I developed new friendships and my horizon expanded, finally being able to view life from a different angle.

Then, I decided to go back to Taiwan to work as an English teacher. I did work for the first year for a couple of months before I returned home. But this time, I wanted to work full-time. This profession was enlightening. I truly enjoyed it. Maybe it's because deep down I never wanted to grow up. So, every time I watched those kids playing, laughing, jumping around and trying hard to comprehend what this "Look-like-us-but-speak-English" American (they thought I was but I'm just a humble girl from a third world country who luckily got an Americanized accent or so they say) teacher was saying, I remember me....

But, even the second plan failed. It was much harder to get a job those days due to the amount of Canadians monopolizing the city. Especially for me, an Indonesian girl who has the passion and what it takes to teach but because of my skin-color and my passport, those backward thinking people REFUSED to take a chance on me. Now I know that some of you will say that I’m not a native speaker after all. So you might think I may not teach the “right” stuff. My defense is; I AM TOTALLY CAPABLE OF TEACHING. Sure I’d make the odd mistakes now and then, but I have seen native speakers who can’t spell library. But they will take them instead of me anyway. Stupid judgmental crap. And when you hate something, you tend to see more. That's what I see in Taiwan. I declared that I loathe the city and the people. And so I came here, to Singapore and hoped to start anew and finally become an adult.

I finally realized that my happy days can't go on for too long. I have to come back to heaviness. But is it that hard to find happiness? Happy as a word, you tend to think light. But I think the word itself has a deeper meaning beyond measure. It is also relative. Happiness for you might be different for me. Theoretically happiness is nothing more than feeling well. Quite simple. But if it is so simple, why is it so hard to get?

Happiness can be blind. It doesn’t see the cost or the importance of things. Maybe my happiness costs a lot, but it wasn’t because of that. I was just happy being a student. It’s like I was buying time. I was postponing age.

Do you ever recall those days? Days when everything was carefree and light. Well, maybe I’m just being childish. Or maybe I’m just being subconsciously terrified that I’m getting old. Maybe, maybe I just wanna be happy.

Whatever that was, I know I can’t stay there too long. I’m willing to move on. And I am moving on. I’m gonna be an adult and start thinking about earning my own money, and I mean a lot, and finally have savings.

Oh well, this post is a tad boring. *Yawns* Mind me… I was just thinking.


(Written when I was 26 and I still wanna be a student again *sigh*)

--Forever young--