An identity crisis awaits

I can't wait to start anew. A fresh beginning and a clean slate. We don't have many opportunities to hit the Reset button and Ctrl-Alt-Del our lives away. As humans, we're doomed to make the most of what life hits us with or just live with the mistakes and the scars they leave upon our souls. Perhaps it's a test of our mettle. Maybe it's the core of our existence, the forces which shape us and give direction to what we will eventually be. Either way, when faced with the opportunity to disregard history, to lose our excess baggage (which hurts a whole damn lot, considering the price one has to pay to take it on board) or better still, throw it away; we seize that chance. To be whoever we want to be. To feel, at least, like we can.

But what if that was a lie? As I finished typing that paragraph, it occured to me that somehow, for the past 4+2+4 = 10 years (wow) of my life, that's what I've been doing. I transferred out of East View Secondary School to go to Pasir Ris Secondary School at Secondary 3 where I met some of my favourite people and felt like somehow I was a worthy human being, deserving of the oxygen I breathe. I was kicked out of TPJC after 3 months which was more of a blow than anyone understood only to head off to SRJC where as a blessing in disguise, I found more joy and meaning in the days I spent there with the people I found. Next came my days in NUS where in my second year I headed off to the other side of the world to do my exchange.

I'd never realised it until now, but there I go. voici. It would appear that there is no permanence in my life, that inherently, ephemerality is the constant. There is nothing good or bad about this, but I think it perhaps explains the person that I am, that I have turned out to be. I escape. I run away from my problems, waiting for the next turn in my life or the next fork in the road. Using new challenges to bury past failures. And here I am, doing it again. I graduate next month, and so begin a new phase of my life. A truly new phase. And I'm scared out of my mind. This is my chance to wield the sculptor's knife, to control the direction of my life. I feel thrust into the open, 'Here you go', the World declares. 'I'm here for you to conquer'.

What now?
Is it time to change the world a step at a time? To turn my world inside out, upside down again for the first time? The truth is, we get so comfortable in our gilded, velvet-lined iron cage that, well, we don't notice the bars anymore.