Growing Old Alone

This stupid day is no different from all the stupid days you’ve had. You put on 8 o’ clock and just like the hundreds and even thousands of mornings before, you made your final check before you go – eyeliner perfect, cellphones in the bag, accessories matching your outfit, keys of your car, money to get you by. You glance at you one last time and suddenly it hits you.

Where did that white hair come from?

Lines under your eyes.

Pants tighter and you don’t remember pigging out.

Damn, you’re getting old. How did that happen?


You remember a childhood drowning with romantic and silver lined dreams. You didn’t dream of being just okay. You had dreams of being someone big, someone great or simply someone significant. For some, the dreams were something specific and certain – to become a doctor, a lawyer, or a famous singer. You looked around with so much amazement at every destination you could choose to land on, changing your minds generously - you had time.


Back then, heartaches were curable with a couple of CHOCNUTS, ORANGE SWITS and MONAY WITH CHEESE. There was no doubt each of your playmate was a true friend and there is certainty that every fight will be resolved by playing another game of piko or Chinese garter. Leaving or being left behind was a distant and strange concept. Everything and everyone around you were JUST HERE NOW.


The only motivation to growing old is to try and look as beautiful as your mother whenever she lines her lips with that gloss or be as commanding as your father especially when he looks so busy with work. You looked at them and promised yourself, “I’m gonna do them proud.”


Only it wasn’t as easy. You spent your adolescence running around trying to fit in. You started dressing up like everyone else or dressing up unlike everyone else. You do anything to feel you belong – you cared too much, cared wrongly, not cared at all. Everyone had their own strategy and one common goal – to fit in.


You did enjoy the firsts – the first crush, the first overnight, the first party, the first movie with friends, first failing grade, first passing grade, first cigarette, first boyfriend/girlfriend, and to a certain extent, the first heartache.


You followed through. You built relationships outside of home. School and friends and even enemies were your chance to be what you couldn’t be with your families. You had your own rules in this one. You even invented your own alphabet, your own codes, secret glances to replace spoken messages – you changed your gears, changed your plans, changed your friends, CHANGED.


It wasn’t long to your first REAL heartache from that guy that swept you off your feet and dropped you just as fast, from that geek who has been running after you and you never realized you like him back until you saw him with another girl, from that bestfriend you fell in love with but never had the timing right.


You allowed yourself to be consumed with work to forget that lost love, to catch up with that dream you faintly remember having or simply to get by. This is another world, new rules, new you.


You did it – work, relationships, family, breath in, breath out – day after day after day.


And here you are – in a marriage you’re so trying to work out… with a kid you struggle to know everyday… in a job that consumes more energy you thought you could ever have… waiting (although you don’t want to put it that way) for love to find you… living alone or living lonely… jobless still… eternally running late for a flight, for a doctor’s appointment, for a client meeting… in everything… with nothing.


You are all the person that the 7-year-old you would have never thought of becoming. Heck, you can’t even claim that because you can barely remember.


It’s not sad… it’s simply a wonder how you got here. Somehow, the pain you experienced, the inconvenience (that is an understatement) you caused this world, the memories you made, the lines on your face, the laughter and friendships you developed and ended, and even how you feel right at this moment don’t add up to who you have become. It seems that if you make an effort to try and trace your life, you will produce nothing but a map of open roads, unclear landmarks if at all, dead ends, one way and no u turn signs, an architecture of absolute disaster. That map, no matter how accurate, will never really tell your personal history, IT WILL NEVER MAP YOU. The spaces between the lines will always have more to say and at the same time nothing to say.


It will never point the direction to people who want to reach you. They’ll get lost as bad as you can change.


Yet, you are here. In one piece, it looks like it. Not really sure whether you should compliment yourself for simply being or pity yourself for being simply this.


It’s not sad. Funny? Crazy? Tricky? Ironic? Maybe… if you could only understand how on earth you got here then you’d understand this world better, this life better, yourself better… perhaps.