I'm 23 going on 24.
And I want to rewrite the childhood of that 23-year-old girl I saw in consultation last last week.
I want her to be carefree and not worry about the strange man that came into her bedroom some nights.
I wish she didn't have drugs and hatred and yearning and loneliness and attempted suicide and an older boyfriend in her system.
I want to shake her by the shoulders and say, 'Sort yourself out. Go to rehab. Don't use pregnancy and a new baby as a life- and existence-affirming tool. Don't you want your child to have a life that is the exact opposite of yours?'
Children can't choose their families, they can't choose to be born into affluence or poverty or love or hatred.
The world is sometimes cruel enough.
Don't condemn them to an even worse existence.

And that's my spiel for the week.
And yes, I need superpowers to do all that.

Sometimes, medicine is a tad too taxing and personal.
No, scratch that.
It's not medicine.
It's people.

The good thing about being young is that
you can change your mind a thousand times and say that you're in the process of finding yourself,
you can be spontaneous and say that you're only young once,
you can wear that colour and say that you're experimenting,
you can have beautiful dreams and say that one day it's all gonna come true,
you can set impossible goals and say that you're allowed to be idealistic,
you can daydream the afternoon away and say that you're building castles in the sky,
you can believe in fairies and prince charming and unicorns and say that you're just done being a child,
you can dabble a little in anything and everything and say that you'll be too old to try them later on.

******

 I still get teary eyed everytime the midwife hands the newborn to the parents and the mother always cries and the father beams like a lighthouse in the middle of the stormy sea. And every single time, I think to myself, 'Heck, it's nice to have a little girl/boy that is half of me and half of my soul mate and we get to live happily ever after.' And I start to build castles in the sky of little sticky pudgy fingers helping me to bake jam tarts on a Saturday afternoon, a safe warm nest of throw rugs at night with my little family by the fireplace, happy Sunday roast lunches with 3 generations at the table so lazy that it stretches to dinnertime, coming home to a chorus of "You're home!" and tight enthusiastic hugs.

And then, I remember that cute little Buddha-like baby I met in Samrong and the castles in the sky somehow fades quite a bit and they lose their rosy glow. Somehow, I feel a little selfish for having those little daydreams.

But hey, I'm still young and I'm allowed to change my mind, I'm allowed to be idealistic and set impossible goals and have beautiful dreams for myself at the same time because I can experiment and find myself.

I want to live with no regrets.
I want to be a bigger person that you.
I want to see the world through rose-coloured glasses.
I want to throw my head back and laugh with no worries.
I want to work hard for something and taste the sweetness of results.
I want to dance in the rain.
I want to soak in the sun and not care about anything.
I want to sway to music without caring about where I am.
I want to wear colours and not worry about whether they match.
I want to smile and mean it.
I want to see the people around me live happily ever after.
I want to take away all the worries of the world.
I want to see how people live on every continent.
I want to see the mean, mean people on this earth punished.
I want to see no suffering.
I want to give happy remaining days to those who do.
I want to fall in love and remain in love til we're gray and old.
I want to remove prejudice and all the -isms in the world.
I want to let people of any kind live in no fear and no regrets.
I want to learn the guitar.
I want to speak French fluently.
I want to drift aimlessly in a gondola in twilight.
I want to have a golden retriever and call it 'Spot'.
I want to have a library of 1st editions.
I want to have a sun-dappled art room filled with oil paints.
I want to lie under the canopy of a tree and let the world whirl by.
I want to see the colours of abstract words.
I want to be happy in love like my parents.
I want to stand in a smokey bar and sing my heart out.
I want to be brave and say "Don't be silly. I'm here already. Stop waiting."
I want to create wonderful things for the world.
I want to leave behind something sweet and eternal and good.
I want to live in the moment and not overthink.
I want to be not constrained by societal norms, etiquette, rules, regulations.
I want to be the best friend.
I want to build a treehouse and live in it like Peter and Jane.
I want to look at someone and say, "I'm home."
I want to look at a child and say, "Don't worry, you're gonna be fine."
I want to look at my parents and say, "Everything I've achieved is for you."
I want to learn how to cry in front of people and not wipe my tears away in secret.
I want to be brave and uncaring enough to show my true expressions.
I want to be careful and carefree at the same time.

I want to have beautiful dreams and live them.

The thing that I know about myself is that again and again, I give in to people and issues and events and whatever that swirls around me.
Sure, I work hard for what I want and I give bloody 200% and in return, if I get whatever it is that I want, then I say 'Awesome! Mel has done well once again'. But then when things don't go the way that I want to go, I say 'Oh well, things happen for a reason and surely there must be something out there that's better than me'.

And so far, that's proven true. Countless times, I've been blessed with plenty of things myself.
And there are some times where I've been blessed with sights of people that I care dearly about being happy and safe and secure in their lives, even though I have had to live with the little regret. But hey, at least the benefits outweigh whatever disappointment/regret/pain I went through.

But sometimes, I just want to be brave and good enough to say 'No, that's not it' and actually mean it and not take it back or overthink it.

But then again, I did try.
So I can sleep tonight. Without the feeling of unknowingness or 'what if's.

"You're too nice, you're too nice, you're too nice!"
Stop it.
You're being too gentlemanly.
If you go un-nice yourself, I would have such an easy time.
Go and embrace your inner ogre. No, not Shrek kinda ogre who really isn't a fairy-tale ogre that eats people and grinds their bones to dust but is really an onion with layers.
Be those kinda ogres that are mean, who takes things and people forgranted, who turns the other way when people fall down the rabbit hole.
Coz if you're like that, the unknowingness could stop.


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