Thursday 26 June 2014

The path taken

Two more weeks and I'll be a twenty-five year old moving back in with her parents. Sort of. My parents haven't been under the same roof for more than a couple of hours in a decade or so.

I'll be a twenty-five year old with no career progress and no stable financials, pretty much like a failure.

I haven't thought about how would it be after I've left. Would I erase it like I did with my life in Form 6? Like how I almost did with my life between the end of Form 6 until the beginning of my degree?

Life in Form 6 started with me literally being dragged into the compounds of SXI. School has already started for nearly a month and I had refused to be let off early from National Service to start because I never had wanted to start. A year and a half later I thought I gained friends for life. And over the next half decade, I lost them.

In between 2007-2009, I barely acknowledge the various part time jobs. I don't remember my life working as an admin in Areca School of Arts. I don't remember much of life as a student doing a twinning degree at INTI. All I remembered was an ignition of love and respect for the classic and jazz arts, and a couple of friends that I still have from a little group that truly kept me sane and alive in INTI.

Then I realise why I don't remember. I shut it all out. The blog posts I wrote about it was deleted. A permanent erasure of nearly three to four years. The following three to four years following my life as a zoologist undergraduate had the same fate not because I hated it, but because they just happened to be in the same blog. I know I wrote the longest post about my experiences as a volunteer with Bronwyn who stumbled across my blog because she set up a GOOGLE alert on anything that mentions 'eastern quoll' and God bless her if she finds this again because she didn't turn it off.

She's been on my mind a lot lately because she is to me, the epitome of what it means to be never too late to do something that you truly love.

I've hit a roadblock in life whilst everyone else is cruising. But I need to see if I've broken down and need dire repair work or is just a hitch between gears and I need to start back up again. For that, I need patience, and the diagnostic time that goes with it. This means I'm too old to just close my eyes and pretend the bad stuff isn't there. Pros and cons, highs and lows, ups and downs, it was the start of a dream came true but what those fairytales didn't warn you is that when dreams that come true in reality, it's never always pretty. It's just another path with the requisite twists and turns but at least a path I chose, a path I aimed for, with all the cracks and uneven surfaces.

I chose this. I walked this far. I will live through it. For this is mine

Sunday 22 June 2014

My choice. My consequences. My life.

She wrote what I didn't.

http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Family/Features/2014/06/01/Heart-and-Soul-We-are-a-family/

And she had it easier.

As a family we weren't close. It wasn't habitual nor ritual. It's an obligation. The obligatory greetings and smiles a few times a year...

When I left on 30 June 2009 for another country I was elated. To finally be free and not-quite-but-still independant...and weirdly enough my severe animosity towards my youngest sister started to dissipate. I could hold a more coherent conservation with my parents, even though through text messaging instead of face to face because I tend to yell instead of throwing my phone (at something soft) to diffuse any tension.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Har har har.

My life as an undergraduate was admittedly a seclusive one. I avoided people as much as I could. I probably spent the most time, voluntarily, with Bronwyn Fancourt who could talk for the both of us as I absorbed everything like a newborn. Other than the occasional chit chat before, during, and after classes, I texted the kareshi a hell of a lot. He was my silent, unseen companion throughout those 3.5 years.

If I kept my eyes and ears open, and swallowed my pride in asking and buried my dignity in ruthless pursuit, I might have gotten far in realising that Steve Irwin-David Attenborough-NatGeo dream. But there's one thing that holds me back in pursuing the moon and it's one thing I find that I cannot give up for anything else.

Oh believe me, I tried...twice.
And both times it broke my heart.

It may rile a few feminist feathers to think I gave up a potentially high-flying career for a man. Especially when the relationship was 90% texting, chatting online and a few emails.Yes. We barely have facetime as a couple. Hell...the way I was going, we may never have facetime for more than a couple of weeks for the next few dozen years. Then what? Will we still be together? We tried going our separate ways but that just caused more misery.

So I took the risqué step of leaving DGFC to plonk myself back into the uncertainty in terms of a job/career just to have a normal relationship where the kareshi and I are not separated by more than a 45min drive in bad traffic. There aren't any confirmed commitments  but I feel this is a step to something more stable. True,  I'm deathly afraid that it may not work out but this is definitely, definitely, definitely, a worthwhile risk to find out because what we have is worth more than a fear of losing a race un-run.

Give me the scars of a past to build upon than whispers of what-ifs.