The realization

Here's what happened to me.

Two nights before, I have a get-together session with around 10 ladies and girls (I am stressing that there is a clear demarcation between the two groups, the ladies and the girls) at my place for a simple dinner. What i noticed was that i'm subconsciously skewing myself towards the working ladies and even when we randomly sat down in a circle, all the students tend to sit at one side and all the working ladies sitting on the other side, as if there is an invisible 20ft deep ravine between us.

Then, Evelyn told me: "Welcome to the "Aunties" group!". And that moment itself, the realization striked me hard, that I'm getting older and can no longer call myself a young girl! If you placed me among a group of 20 years old girls, probably i will be so out of place and people can spot me easily that I'm not really belong to the group.

(Side Track: Since most of my friends had passed through their first quarter life as well, i am just wondering when was that moment of truth for them? How old/when did they started to notice the fact that they are getting older)

For as long as I can remember people have always thought I am much younger than I actually was (or maybe i'm just self deceiving), partly due to my chubby face and choice of clothing (jeans and T shirt). Before this, I'm not really awared of the fact that my age is catching up, however i do admit that there has been some significant events happened in the past few years that slowly brought this all to light.

1. Many of my friends were married (yes, that's you, Dorcas and Chel!) and couples popping out kids (Lorna and Yue!!!) even those single dudes who swore to celibacy are settling down (except kim, hehehe). and when i'm attending wedding function, my relatives and the married ones will bug me nonstop on when its my turn.

2. Anytime I see girls making kawaii a.k.a acting cute pose during photography session and i couldnt bring myself to do the same thing. Sometimes when i looked at the actions of some younger people and think "they are definitely getting it wrong!", and moreover i found myself constantly telling the the younger ones " when i'm at your age..."

3. Doing all the grown up things such as having a car loans and mortgage, getting an insurance, paying bills, bills and more bills.

4. Every time i looked at the outrageous attires of the younger ones and realized that there is definitely a generation gap between us. (sign, ripped jeans are not popular anymore, mind you i have 2 pairs of those lying in my closet)

ripped jeans with style

5. I'm reminiscing things which happens years ago more often, exactly what i'm doing now.

6. I went for aerobic classes and cutting down junk food consumption, because all the food i ate showed up on the wrong parts of my body

However, the most evident of all is the change of my mindset, i used to think that life is all about living it to the fullest, which means travel to more places, getting to know more people, involved in lots of activities that wear me out physically, tiring as i sound but i know tomorrow when i open up my eyes its another brand new day and i can start it all over again. Being young also means having crushes and falling madly in love, sometimes even heart breaks were painfully sweet because it makes me felt alive.

Not only my physicals, its seems like my heart had aged as well, intense feelings/emotions worn me out easily. After 4 years of coupling, Peter and I love each other more as a family and a friend, rather than being love sick and crazy over each other all the time. Furthermore, the thought of settling down keep comes back to me from time to time. Nowadays, Saturday means snuggling in my bed til 10am, have a great brunch and watch a corny movie, practically just doing nothing. Boring as it sound, but i think i can adapt well to the life with no busy schedule.

Frankly, i'm not old (just older), i am far from it. Nonetheless, the differentiation between my early 20's and getting-into-late 20's life was obvious and indisputable. Do i miss my youthful days? sometimes yes, but majority of the time, not really. I think i've already tasted what youth was all about, and my physicals and emotional has taken a change to suit for other types of challenges in life.

As such, i'm eager to see what life is going to offer me next.

Update (25/6/2009):
The cat is out of the bag, i'm officially 26 today. The gathering mentioned in the blog was a get together session plus my pre-birthday celebration, thanks to my dear church mates for the surprise! and thanks to others who had send me birthday wishes as well (ps. adam, never expected to receive your msg, great to hear from you pal!!)

ps2: will upload some picture soon.