Retrospect

When I was six, I met best friend number one. I still wanted to be a boy then, and acted as tough as the next bloke who came along. I was still invincible, and no one could mess with me. She amazed me with her girliness, and her My Little Pony dolls. I loved her to bits the moment I met her, but I switched schools and lost touch as you do when you're that age.

When I was seven, I spun a story about ghosts and ghouls haunting the school, and led a group of kids into an expedition to try and find them. I got into trouble with the prefects, and ever since then nursed a slight annoyance for figures of authority. I rediscovered best friend number one again, who had joined the same school, and despite our parents’ initial objection to our friendship we’ve been friends ever since.

When I was eight, I met best friend number two and three. I was crawling under the tables in computer class, caught up in a fantasy world of castles and dragons and unicorns. They joined in my make believe world and we became friends despite my notorious dislike and unsportsmanlike behaviour when it came to losing computer games. Best friend number two and I started drawing comics, and we filled books with sketches and stories of Rose Mary and Mary Rose, Ace Krusher, Acorn Oakley and Venus Mathison and the Insiders.

At twelve, I came to terms with my jealousy. I slowly accepted that friends were not mutually exclusive, and that others could be friends with mine.

Puberty came with a vengeance at thirteen, complete with zits, teenage angst and self-centredness. My feet took me everywhere that year, and I frequented best friend number two and three’s houses. I endured bullies, my mother’s threats at changing schools due to my unimpressive grades and the trials of puberty.

When I was fifteen, I discovered a particular self help book and that changed my life around. Apparently, the change ran deeper than I realized and affected more people than I thought it would, in a very positive way, but I was not to know that until years to come. I became active, began to challenge myself, and made changes with my character that stayed with me throughout.

Seventeen was a nostalgic year, the year leaving high school and all the friends I had made behind. I was on the yearbook team and some other clubs, which was just an opportunity to skip all the classes we could. It was a year of uncertainty, because we had no idea what was going to happen in years to come. Yearbooks were signed, promises were made, and opportunity awaited.

Eighteen introduced me to a new crowd, the boarding school crowd, which I hadn’t encountered before. It was a culture shock, but I slowly came around to a new way of thought, and slowly got used to social norms and customs that I had never gotten used to before. It was a very fun year, despite the stress and struggle of the express course I was doing. It was a year of firsts; the first time I lived away from home, the first time dealing with a love triangle, the first car accident, the first taste of independence.

Nineteen brought me to Australia, a land where I would taste the many challenges of my life. We had random road trips, travelled to different states, experienced the world Australia had to offer. It was then when I suffered my first attack of depression, when I realized that sometimes people changing affect you in more ways than most, that there was more to life than these four walls. It was a year when I started to see my sisters as adults and my parents as people with thoughts and dreams.

At twenty, I was one of the older people in college, but that didn’t stop me from hitting the party circuit as hard as anyone else. It was a year where I made a bunch of crazy, crazy friends, and some saner ones, experienced all that college life had to offer, gained the tag sober Asian cunt, and assimilated into a life that was so foreign from my own. It was a year where the limits of my friendship were tested, a year where I had to change the clothes of friends who had passed out in their own vomit, play mother to a group of wasted friends, but had the most interesting experiences of my relatively sheltered life.

When I was twenty one, I moved into my first real house and fell in love with the idea of entertaining, and have been ever since. It was a year with a great household, and I lived with two girls who would become a couple of my closest friends, who then promptly left at the end of that year. I had my first relationship, and my first breakup.

At twenty two, I learnt that life wasn’t as easy as it looked, but I breezed through it. Housemates changed, and it was a different dynamic, but one I was comfortable with. I spoke more of my mother tongue than I ever had before in my life and learnt to cook for large amounts of people. I met a person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. It was a quiet, peaceful year.

At twenty four, I learnt the meaning of regret. I lost a relationship important to me, and hurt many others around me in the process. I let myself down, but soon picked myself up again. I learnt to confront my weaknesses, and tried to strengthen my relationships. It is a year filled with trials and tribulations, challenges and promise.

But life’s like that isn’t it?

Filled with promises.