Life |

I did not expect to turn 30 now.

Yet nearly one month into my 30s, I felt like I have been here a long time. Perhaps nothing has changed, I certainly still feel the same. I wasn’t expecting a whirlwind carrying me off my feet and finding myself in a whole new world, but something’s gotta be different, no?

When I looked back into my childhood during my teens and early 20s, the shy little girl, who loved to retreat to her private make-believe world, flew plastic “kites” out the 8th floor of a one-roomed HDB window and drew wherever she could, had seemed a different person. Similarly my younger self had imagined 30-year-old me to be less inhibited, more matured and maybe, not so much like myself. I’m not entirely sure why I would wish myself to be a different person, but I’m guessing that the fear of staying where I was, not going anywhere nor experiencing life the way everyone else expected it to be has always been that underlying current that gripped me and the decisions I made. As it turns out, the Greed of Man runs in me. However happy I am in any stage of my life, I would wish that I’m somewhere else. Many times, I had related to this Nelly Furtado’s song “I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away, I don’t know where my soul is, I don’t know where my home is…”

Rare are the moments when I’m truly contented.

Granted, I have never been ambitious. I have never craved that power suit nor set my sight on any golden ladder. Material Wealth is something that is good-to-have and not a must-have. However I do have dreams. Dreams of setting my own pace, moving to the beats of my drum. I wanted someone to love and to be loved back. Just like the little girl that I was and inadvertently always has been, I wanted to find a place to belong. I want to belong. As much as the wanderlust in me want to travel and explore the world, my feet want to find their resting place and my hand wants to touch what’s real and truly mine.

Yet, I know, I’m getting there. I’m paving stones for my little path while others may be building their yellow-bricked road. This year has been big for me. Unlike the last 5 years, I have spent this whole year on ground, leaving behind a 5-years lifestyle that I both loved and hated and will always fondly remember. This year IS a new chapter. I got proposed to, not once, but twice (See next post) by the same man whom has been my best friend for years and would be home to me in November. I’d made lots of friends in my short stint at the 1st YOG, all lovely people whom I considered myself honoured and blessed to have met. And then I turned 30. It isn’t that turning 30 is a scary thing, leaving my 20s behind however, is keeping me on tenterhooks. It’s like, I have defined my 20s and look! there are a ton of things that I have not done! Yet while every stone I pick for my humble path may add to the coarsening of my aging skin and add a new ache to my body, I thank God for all that I was given and will be receiving. I will never be that wise woman that I want to be because I realised that I’m still learning, learning to deal with issues, learning to live my life and learning to be content.

Here’s something from Robert Frost that I’ve always like:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.