I would have officially left my angry adolescent years behind me - only to embark on a more mature, more fulfilling journey in Life.

Really, whom am I trying to kid?

In retrospect, twenty years is quite a bit of time for a Chinese girl to be alive;
considering that many number of Chinese baby girls in the east are still murdered in the womb or at birth
thanks to a certain country's infamous one-family-one-child policy.
These twenty years have been relatively luxurious;
considering that many Iraqi, Palestinian, and Israeli children well under twenty are dying even as I type this.

So, in retrospect, I do have much to be thankful for these past two decades - don't I?

This year - and as it has been for almost three years - I almost forgot entirely about my birthday until reminded by somebody else.
In March in fact, I shocked a friend to disbelief when I totally forgot my date of birth when asked.

It's not that I'm trying to make a scene and give a lil' publicity to that date among my circle of friends.
Trust me, I'm a lil' thick skinned when it comes to my birthday;
and unlike others, I wouldn't hesitate to announce to every Siti, Ah Lian, and Letchumi and throw in a birthday wish list to go with it.
I had truly forgotten all about it.

Or maybe I have been trying to forget all about it.
Trying to obliterate a day's events by trying to obliterate the day itself.
Trying to move on without a day's events by trying to move on without the day itself.
But (un)fortunately, the day is just a day that won't go away - I'm stuck with it (un)fortunately till my dying day.

Which comes to my next best solution…
I have only messed with thoughts of such a desperate solution but once in another part of my life.
And this time, like the other, they have been serious calls for help.

Thoughts like these are best kept far at bay.
For isn't it true that God has a funny way of giving you exactly what you ask for when you least expect it - when you want it the least?

I guess I do have much to be thankful for, in retrospect.
And I've managed to move about my daily life so seamlessly that the magnitude of how screwed up my brain is is virtually undetectable.

So maybe I have managed to find a way to forget a day's events without forgetting about the day itself.

When you see my mirror, do you look at it, or do you stare right through it?

Margaret Alexandria Yoong
May 3, 2003