In transition

Today, I accidentally boarded the train in the opposite direction of my destination. I was caught off-guard, the same feeling I get when I see a familiar face in a sea of not-so-familiar and quickly conjure a smile and a little wave. I heard a different station name, looked out abruptly, and saw a different station sign. That’s what happens-when you have your head in the clouds-I am dreaming too much for my own good really. It’s been ten days since I have returned and I am spending most of the time alone, thinking, and reading. I have not arranged to meet up with anyone because I am enjoying this solitude:-I shop, talking to nobody; I walk into a bookstore without looking for any book, just to smell the place, pick up a book and flip through its pages. I buy a snack and travel along the underpass, I hear a basker singing and playing Peng You and between where I am and where he is at, those memories zip back and I stop to give, without telling anyone that I have stopped, wait a moment for me.

But this private, individualized respite has lasted longer than it should have and has crossed over the boundaries to become Unhealthy. So, it is a good thing that I have found a job today. It is as if I am in an Orange jumper, carrying a banner, shouting “I’m refreshed and ready to enter society again!”

What do I want to do in society in the future anyway? In the future is just an easy way of making three years sound distant and less daunting. I am entirely clueless, I sent out applications of internships to so many places, all of bizarrely different natures. And when they all reply to say they want final year students, I thought fine then, I’ll work at a café, something I would not do in the future anyway. But, this could very well be something I would want to do.

When I was in primary school, I wanted to be a Longan Seller, a stationery shop owner, a sticker shop lady because Longans was my favourite fruit, and because I wanted free fancy pens and stickers. And over the years, I thought of being a lawyer, a teacher, and now, now I want to be so many things at once, I am overwhelmed by Now What.

Growing up is such a pain sometimes to the point that youth is wasted on the young. There is the urgency to consume as much as you can. Yet, there is age acting like a buoyant keeping you afloat, each time you push yourself to the bottom of the pool, wanting to absorb everything, you spring up. Youth limits your learning because it just leaves you confused most of the time and in the heart of the darkness of confusions, can one see anything? Oh right, everyone grows up. And we are all in this together.

Yet, there is a perpetual thought that ten years down the road, I would still wake up everyday, making instantaneous decisions on what breakfast shall be today, and planning for today with no great, grand plans of the tomorrows that I can speak of.