I have many, many fond memories of my childhood and of all my friends, of Malaysia and my life there. One in particular stands out, one in particular still haunts me.
I had a friend named Nina, who I loved and still love despite our geographical distance and the time between our last conversation and now—and we were very close when we were younger. At one stage, I called her best friend, and she really was one of the best. She was a few years older than me, and she was always of a very breezy personality, not so easily affected by what other people said or thought (or at least, she never displayed it outwardly), and I really admired her for that.
Our friendship was made up of hanging out at school, going to her apartment after class whenever my dad was too busy to pick me up and I had nowhere else to go, and calling each other almost every night when we were at our own homes, carrying those massive corded handsets around from room and room, discussing anything and everything and racking up tremendous phone bills for our parents. I loved those phone chats.
It was over the phone that she told me something I still think about to this day. She distilled me and my personality down to one very succinct line: "You're always like this, Roanne, you always start something and never finish it."
Quick disclaimer: my memory isn't the strongest, and I am only paraphrasing what she said, but the gist of it is right there.
She didn't say it to be mean, she said it very simply, like it was a plain and clear fact, indisputable and obvious. I think I was too stunned to answer for a moment, but we moved the conversation along anyway, smoothly and unabated in only the way young children could manage.
I still think about that. Every now and then, her words come back to me. I remember holding the phone against my ear—dark green, the receiver squared and angled in shape, porous texture, black spiral cord that I liked to twist my finger into, Telekom—and hearing that.
She didn't mean harm by it. But I felt hurt, later that night, when I replayed that single sentence in my head. I felt hurt, later in the years to come, whenever I'd look back at my recent actions, my failures, my struggles, my difficult moments in life. I wanted so badly to prove her wrong, I wanted so badly to prove myself wrong. Because she was right and I knew she was right; she was absolutely spot-on with her diagnosis—not even stubborn me could deny that.
I am easily scared, I am easily cowed, and when I encounter an obstacle, my first instinct is always to find out whether it's still possible for me to quit, throw up my hands and walk away and leave unscarred.
And in defence, I will say that this is not always bad: knowing when to give up is sometimes the best victory to be won. Knowing how to choose what to pursue and knowing what you're willing to give up is important in life. There are many things that I would love to become: astronaut, inventor, philosopher, polyglot, concert pianist, mother of an army of children, writer of a novel that would outsell the Bible, CIA agent (citizenship be damned), a horsemaster (not just a horse rider, please note that). And as a person limited in years of life, I know that I have to pick and choose what dreams to give up and what dreams to hold on to.
So giving up is sometimes good; it is, at least, necessary.
I guess what I'm driving at is that sometimes I'd look back at all my years, all twenty of them thus far, and think: "Where am I now, where am I going, and what paths did I take to lead me here? What other paths have I ignored to get to where I am?"
I have very few regrets in life, and all of them are more of the social-interaction variety; none are concerned with my major decisions in life, like deciding what university to attend or what degree to take, or whether to go on intermission or not. These things, these decisions I make and stick to and follow and don't regret. But I do wonder.
I have accomplished many things so far that I am really, really proud of: I've graduated with my double degree with good grades, I got accepted into the Honours program (though whether I go through with it or not is another matter), I studied abroad in China, Taiwan and Japan (by far my most interesting and proudest accomplishment), I've made friends from all over the world (by far the most important accomplishment), and many other things that I can't even begin to record down...
But I am always asking myself about the things I have not yet achieved. The things that I am only slowly making progress on, if any, the things that I've put on the back burner, telling myself that I'll eventually 'accomplish' them, as if that verb isn't vague and ill-defined. I have so many goals, and I always worry about never meeting them.
Productivity has always been a concern of mine. I love reading and thinking about it, trying to make my ways more efficient. I use all sorts of apps to organise my life, I integrate all sort of things like 'non-zero day' and 'pomodoro timer' into my lifestyle, all with the hopes of being more productive and actually making headway into finishing my goals—
—because I am afraid. I am only 20 now, and I can look back and see only a few years, look ahead and see still many, many years to go and remind myself that I still have time. But my worst fear is to hit 50, 60, 70, 80, and look back at my life and the paths I've taken and realise that I've never really moved forward, I've never really checked off everything on my list. Since I was young, I've been bolstered up by praise coming from so many people: friends, family, teachers, relatives. The expectations for me have always been high, and everyone has always told me that they expected great things out of me. And in turn, I grew up forming these own preconceived ideas in my head of what I was going to do when I grew up, when I became an adult. I was going to be a doctor, no, a lawyer, no, a CEO of a massive global organisation, no, a best-selling novelist raking in tons of money, no—I was going to be amazing in some way. And yet there was always another voice in my head, loud and clear and strong, reminding me that I am a coward, that I am a quitter, and more likely than not, I'm going to achieve nothing of value in my life. I am not going impact anyone, I am not going to contribute to the world, to society, to an industry, to the arts, to my country, to my family, to my friends.
I want to prove Nina's voice, grainy and coming in over the telephone lines through that green receiver, wrong. I want to prove myself, that loud and clear and strong voice inside my head, wrong. Yes, I've quitted many things many times, and I will continue to do so—because there are some things that I know aren't for me, they aren't what I truly want, and giving them up would be the wisest decision. But the things that really matter, the hopes that I'm clinging the hardest to, the artificial checkpoints that I've always imagined meeting, I'm going to run at them, I'm going to charge forth and yank them into my bare hands and I'm going to never let them go. The goals I've made, the dreams I've constructed, the milestones I'm striving for—I'm going to start them and I'm going to finish them.
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