The Way

I think it's odd that it takes a scholarship application question for me to start questioning myself and what I want out of this lifetime.

And even odder, is my discovery that I don't really know.

Oh, I do have inklings, in that annoyingly intangible way. Where snippets of contentment, stability and happily-ever-afters appear, misty, in a bubble of my rosy-coloured future that occasionally floats my way. But for me to put it down in 70-100 words, I find that it's something that I am strangely, incapable of. And that unsettles me greatly.

It probably isn't a very big deal. But the thing is, I've lived my life for the past 19 years on the essence of predictability. It doesn't sound very exciting but it's true. And it even sounds a little sad, now that I'm actually seeing this in the form of squiggly black lines that make it a reality which I can no longer deny, because I like to think of myself as anything but predictable (and boring).

But it's true, that long before I got to any point in my life, the path that I was going to take there, was already planned out for me. I was never really physically forced into it but maybe because it was all I saw in my life, I figured that that was The Way To Be.

And I would have continued along this well-trodden path that I never devoted much thought to, but now that I am, for the first time, deviating from The Way, it feels a little strange. Even harder, is the knowledge that I have deviated not by choice, but by failings on my own part.

It makes me wonder if I had put much thought into it right from the beginning, would I have even started on The Way. Maybe I would still have, because by all standards, The Way is still the best. It has prestige and all the pomp and circumstance you could ever possibly want and I think that I have it in me to want to be the best.

But at the same time, it would have been so easy for me to go the other way because innately, I think I have a large propensity to be a very bad child.

Instinctively, I rebel against most conventions and nothing annoys me more than people telling me what to do. Worse still, that things should be done a certain way simply because it's the way they've been done for the last decade. If I wasn't in Students' Council myself, I would be utterly condescending towards these Bright-Eyed, Cheery and Enthusiastic people who run around and do things that are, let's be honest shall we, sometimes very stupid.

It makes me think then, that this propensity of mine scares me, so much so that I bind myself so tightly to all these rules, regulations and goals so that I can keep this part of me submerged inside my murky crevices where no one can see it.

And maybe that's why, sometimes I feel this strange unexplainable feeling, that is probably borne of me forcing these two incongruent and opposing parts of myself together in this very awkward and painful dance.

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I'm not really sure how I even got here. The truth is, I just want to be happy. I want to have a pretty house with glass and black marble, with many large bathrooms stocked with soaps that are colour-coded and designer sinks. I want to have a squishy bed with sheets that always smell like magnolia and honey and I want two cats with a Pudgey golden retriever puppy called Poof. I want to have the freedom to work whenever I feel like it and to be proud of every piece of work I churn out. I want to visit bookstores and drink tea, ocassionally by myself, and watch people for a day in their lives. And most of all, I want to know that I didn't foolishly sacrifice the things that are most precious to me, in order to achieve all of this.

But I can't really put this in, can I. So technically at 1.21pm on March 15, 2007 I am really nowhere near figuring out what I want my life to be in 10 years.

So I guess I'll settle for short term goals now. Like getting myself fed.