The last thing one should ever do after making a monumental decision about their life is to celebrate it. Because that means you’re thinking about it.
Just last week, I’d made the decision to grow up. To accept that I can create the life that I’d been dreaming of, and was so sure could only be found elsewhere, here - a place I’ve sneered at and despised since I learnt how to twitch my cute little button nose. It was momentous. There were days and days of Practical Self V. Escapist Self arguing if this house should be built here instead of in a dingy apartment above a street where bar brawls and roach-trips provide nightly entertainment, where there are four seasons that aren’t “shopping”, “hot”, “monsoon” and “flu”. It is also there, apparently, where I will find a true love who does not still live with his mother.
Then there was the issue of why I was staying. Can I really be happy here? The opportunities sound really great – chart your own future, do things the way you want to because you think it’s the right way. But are they for real? What’s to say that I’m not being swindled by a big conspiracy that has already been set in motion to destroy the very thing I’m giving up my dream life for? I’m not enough of an egoist to think that I’m some sort of saviour but here’s hoping that I can make things less bad at least. If I did get screwed over, it would surely be an epic betrayal like Italy allowing New Zealand to hold them to a draw at the World Cup Finals.
There were a few days of ding-ing and dong-ing on my head that was further encouraged by a red tide of rampaging hormones but I knew I had to wait for all that noise to stop, lest it colour my decision. So I did. I stopped thinking about it completely and emptied the vessel of my mind. There was nothing I could do about the other, so I simply waited it out until it was all clear, and I was convinced that I was thinking straight again because the sun was in the blue, blue sky, there was a brilliant rainbow that perfectly framed that lush green tree and the rabbits are out having fun in the fields.
And I decided based on what felt right. I had never felt more at peace and satisfied and invigorated and ready for a New Life so I decide to celebrate by picking some beautiful wild flowers from the field that the rabbits were cutely nibbling on and to my utter delight, they turned into lollipops!
A week later, some lollipops had been eaten and the others that were gripped in my greedy little hands were melting into a gloomy shade of black-eye purple. There was a slight churning in my gut. Some people were congratulating me while many others rolled their eyes and muttered to themselves “again?”
Another week later, things had gone back to normal. I was perpetually sweating like a pig, there was no money to go shopping with, the damn thunderstorms were flooding the path to the office, I need to stay in bed (it’s the flu, you see, that comes every Monday) and what I wouldn’t give to be living in a little apartment where it is winter and I can wear a pretty coat to work and to go grocery shopping for the romantic dinner I will cook for my man that evening when I got home at 6pm. Oh, how I wish…
