Allison's Archives

Everybody is a little bit of a liar sometimes. Especially those who tell you that your twenties are meant to be the best decade of your life. This might prove true for a lucky few, but the rest of us who fall unceremoniously in the majority have the right to call this mantra’s bluff. The best decade of your life will not be dictated by a number; it is when you decide to start this decade and, very simply, your definition of ‘best’.

I speak for some but not all when I say that, three years into my twenties, I am more lost than ever. It does not escape me the purpose, goals, skills, and people I have when I rise with every morning’s sun, but I am lost in the sense that I do not know how to fit them all together to create this alleged best decade. I am approaching the end of the paved road; come graduation, the work to forge my own road ahead begins. There are decisions to be made: the design I will draw, the tools I will use, the materials I will lay, and the people I will work with. I am the furthest thing from being confident in any choice I make, but I cannot risk running out of roads.

Preface: I wrote this piece back in March when I was still learning how to walk with a broken ankle, applying for graduate jobs, rebuilding my relationships, and riddled with the fear of fast-approaching adulthood. The past three years of my life culminated in spring last, and not in a giddy-in-a-field-of-freshly-bloomed-tulips type of way. I refrained from publishing this piece too quickly (read: the moment I was done writing it) because I did not want the opinion of others on the issues I was grappling with; I wanted to figure things out on my own.

Recently, I have also come to appreciate the beauty of solitude and privacy. This does not mean I have sheltered myself away from civilization; rather, there is a quiet nicety when the only voice in your head sounds just like yours, and there is more authenticity to experiences off-screen.

As such, I decided to only publish this piece when newfound developments have rooted themselves firmly in my life, and no amount of wind or rain could threaten to rip them away from my orchard. Since you are reading this now, the time is nigh. The fruits are still ripening, but I invite you to stand under the shade and appreciate them with me.

Note: I have since rewritten this piece so the tense makes sense and adjusts for my current reality as opposed to that of five months ago.

two roads diverged in a yellow wood

When the first words of this article were laid, the heat of July was four months away from us and so was my graduation. My parents had been planning an extensive cuti-cuti UK itinerary that would work its way up north from London, with a slight pause in the middle for my cap and gown moment—the crescendo that sixty thousand pounds over three years have been building up to.

The ceremony flew by quicker than I had anticipated and the penny dropped: Graduation is one thing, the life that comes after is another. Lukewarm gods did not intervene in the dilemma I faced: Do I stay in the UK or do I go home to Malaysia? It must have been some kind of joke to them, knowing that indecisiveness paralyzes me.

Let’s not mince words and I’ll reveal all the aces I had up my sleeve now that the game is finally over. The first path was the fruition of my application frenzy back in spring where I had several job offers in Malaysia, all from prestigious companies that would have erased any financial worries and boosted me onto a higher rung on the corporate ladder. A sane individual would have packed up and booked the next flight within two shakes of a lamb’s tail, but the fact that I am someone who uses phrases like ‘two shakes of a lamb’s tail’ instead of ‘EOD (end of day)’ should tell you that corporate life is a mold I do not fit into.

The second path was to stay in the UK on a graduate visa, a choice that would allow me space and time to lurch at my creative pursuits that have always been on the back burner. It comes as no surprise that I reserve a jar of love for writing and its creative companions, and I have always kept this love on the hushed side lest it jeopardizes a corporate future. The truth put bluntly, is that only a handful of creatives get to pay their bills through art, so you can understand why I have always fallen back on the safety net of a corporate job.

Between post-graduation stability and a chance to plunge head-first into my creative passions, how could I choose? I was left to my own devices which came in the form of seeking advice over brooding dinners with friends. We exhausted every method: a pros and cons list, flipping a coin, consulting tarot cards, playing out the details of each scenario—nothing helped.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost was undoubtedly written for me. Yet, the poem ends with ‘I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’ Okay, Robert, how do you know which is the path less traveled by? Rhetorical! The answer, simply, is that you don’t. You don’t know what you will gain or lose until you make a decision, and part of life is learning to live with the regret of the path you did not choose, should you have any.

A rotation of questions plagued me every night: Am I stubborn for giving up the jobs back home? To push away the certainty of a comfortable life where I could reunite with family? Am I selfish for wanting to stay? Haven’t I already enjoyed enough privilege for the past three years abroad? But! When am I going to be twenty-three again and be able to see the world next door (read: Europe)? If not now, when am I ever going to throw myself into the deep end and discover how far my creativity spans, how much ink I have left in my pen? Surely the odds are stacked less against me to take risks at twenty-three than when I’m thirty-three with greater responsibilities to consider?

There was, also, the dissenting chorus of how home isn’t all that bad which falls squarely short of calling me ungrateful for the opportunities at my door. Yet, many fail to recall that KL, where I would have been working, is the furthest thing from home. Home is an island four hours away from the capital. This was why it came as no surprise that a select few could not understand my hesitation to go home. 

I could go on and on about my state of mind back then but it does not change the reality in which I’m publishing this piece: that I now have a job in Manchester that I am excited to wake up for at the break of every dawn. I have decided to stay for reasons I will keep to my chest save for one: I want to be able to say I tried. To say that I tried to build a life for myself, a career that I am not only passionate about but am good at—regardless of the outcome. And if I fail, so help me God, then I will pack my bags and book a flight home by EOD.

But oh, the nights so sweet I shall sleep to be able to say I tried!

the dating app designed to be deleted

For a decent eight years, I was devoted to the idea of growing old with my high school sweetheart. No doubt there are still ample years for this to manifest, but I have long since moved on from the boy and vice versa. Amicably, we remain friends. 

Since high school, I have hit a few snags when it came to relationships (endearingly) and concluded my longest relationship to date (also endearingly) not long after my last birthday. The spilled milk was a hassle that morphed into wine that stained my whole world and took several months to clean up, and I did cry over it—but never mind bygones. 

Fast forward to March when my housemate and I were sitting in my room as I packed for a short trip to London. I was recounting my run-ins with love and it took all of five minutes before he snatched my phone and created a Hinge profile. Of course, this began as a joke, which is why I’m not at all embarrassed to indulge in the tale. In fact, as fervent of a dating app hater as I might have been, I have come to see things in a different light and even subscribed to the idea that it could do everyone some good to get on a dating app at least once in their life (unless you are already engaged in a happy relationship, then maybe skip this entire section). However short-lived my expedition on Hinge was, it allowed for the gleaning of the world that is modern dating. 

A relevant sidetrack: March also introduced me to the sharp-witted author Fran Lebowitz whose tone and style in social commentary was less like a breath of fresh air and more like a leafblower of rawness. As such, kindly enjoy the following observation I have concluded from a few years of dating, written in Lebowitzian mimicry. 

One must liken dating to the purchase of clothing. A tedious process, to be sure, but it can largely be boiled down to four scenarios:

1. You happen across a piece that enhances your best features and brings out your best self, so to speak. You hop, skip, and gallop over to the cashier with glee and bring home the purchase. You are happy with it. You wear it through all seasons, again and again, through rain and shine. 

2. You find a piece that you believe looks good on you in the dim lights of the store’s fitting room and ring it up. When you return home to put on a low-budget Paris/Milan/New York/London fashion show, you realize it wasn’t quite what you were looking for. As such, you wield the executive decision to return it (to his mother or the stork that delivered him is up to your discretion). 

3. When perusing through racks and racks of the catalog, a rather interesting piece catches your eye. You feel a pit in your stomach as you mull over whether you want it. Are you ready for a new addition to your wardrobe? Do you really need it or are you just here to impulsively purchase something to fill the void in your heart? (Too much too quick? Sorry.) You don’t swipe your card and go home. Yet you can’t stop thinking about it. When you finally decide you want it and make the long drive back to the store, it’s all sold out. Oops. Better luck next time. 

4. You set foot in the store and linger for hours. No, not linger. You stay intently, set on the objective of going home with something new. You don’t find anything to your taste. You tell the saleslady that you are looking for something around 6ft, preferably Asian with a good sense of humor and cooking skills, and does not under any circumstance boulder. She is rude to you and of no help. Maybe you are in the wrong store. Sometimes being empty-handed is better than carrying a burden. 

Such is the reality of dating. Do not think me shallow to only classify Cupid’s jurisdiction into four categories; I have neither the gall or evidence to betray the gods this way, though it is safe to say that every one of us has fallen in one of those classes at least once in our life. Very unfortunately, I have been a victim of all four; very fortunately, none of them lasted too long. 

Dating apps are, in one word, exhausting. It takes too much effort to sustain several conversations and worse yet when those conversations go bust and conclude in distasteful ghosting or upfront requests for something not very family friendly. It seemed, for a short while, that every guy’s hobby was gymming and watching films, what they want to do more of this year is travel, and they have a collective unusual skill that is getting back their ‘borrowed’ hoodies. Come on now, which factory is mass-producing Hinge profiles by the penny? 

There is a whole art to flirting and self-introductions, to taking a pick axe to the ice, and to refrain from judging a stranger too harshly on the accuracy of their grammar on their profile. Modern dating, at least for me, is like eating soup with a fork because you lost the spoon. So much work goes into every scoop yet you reap minimal reward. It’s like why would I go for a jog in the park when I had just come off running a marathon where I was mugged of my sanity at the halfway mark? 

I had expected all my friends to play devil’s advocate and rein me in, to say that I should focus on myself for a while—the usual advice that good friends keep in their back pockets. But I don’t have good friends; I have great ones. The kind whose eyes brightened up when I told them what had escalated from one night, three days, two weeks of downloading a dating app. Many dinners have been had to dissect the peculiar situation I found myself in. I would like to caution, at this point, that I am in this because of how fascinating it is to try to understand the phenomenon that is modern dating, and less because I’m looking for the love of my life (and if he presents himself, that is just a happy coincidence). 

There are just so many nuances to dating! Where I come from, there is no such thing as dating; you jump from friends to officially being boyfriend-and-girlfriend within weeks. Oblivious are we to the concept of ‘seeing someone’ or ‘dating exclusively without labels’; our parents just want grandchildren by the next Chinese New Year or Hari Raya or Diwali. 

I have learned, for example, that one must perpetually remember the three words not to speak to a romantic interest in the modern dating sphere. No, not ‘I love you,’ that phrase can be thrown around as much as one pleases so long as one is sincere. The three words one shall never speak is this: ‘What are we?’ In fact, one should only pose such a question if one and one’s romantic interests are both either products made in abhorrent sweatshops or seasonal fruits, as those are the only things that require labels. 

Then there is the whole discussion about who pays which opens the floodgates to a new circle of hell where you (the lady) are doomed to be seated in the chair (not the booth because he wasn’t bright enough for that) as the waitstaff approaches your table with the card machine in slow motion, and you awkwardly make a show of reaching into your bag and shuffling around until he pulls out his card—in which case you pull out your lipgloss—or god forbids he asks to split—in which case you pull out your card and offer to foot the whole bill just to make a point.

Don’t even get me started on the bases. And I’m not talking baseball. 

I refuse to publicize the state of my current relationship (if any), but I have since deleted the app—a very effortless practice seeing as how I was never really attached to begin with. But the shortlived escapade also helped with moving on, to know that whatever happens in life isn’t the be-all and end-all, that you can always find a new person, a new job, a new city if you’d just let yourself. Before, I failed time and time again to clue myself in on where things went wrong, scratching the walls for some hint of the moment a ripened fruit turned sour. I asked, to a sky that does not answer, I was raised right in a two-bedroom apartment against the acoustics of piano and poetry, so why is it that I fail to give and receive love as generously as my mother does? Why is it that the love I have been shown is not mine to keep, so much so that I have become proficient at writing about people in the past tense?

But closure is a myth and not everything can be traced back to some form of childhood issue. You are not going to keel over into the afterworld just because the love of your life found the love of their life. Who told you you can only have one love of your life, anyway? And if you could only have one, shouldn’t that person be yourself, and shouldn’t you subscribe to the belief that you deserve to be loved as much as you can love? I digress. If anything, Hinge has taught me exactly what I don’t want in a relationship and allowed me to practice communicating my boundaries better. Don’t go into everything in life hoping to arrive at some kind of destination; sometimes the function of a life event is to teach you how to get to your final destination. Hey! Maybe that’s what Robert Frost was on about.

I’m closer to thirty than my mother is 

I’ve been thinking about what I will write on my birthday cake in a month and a half. I’ve developed a knack for the witty and punchy, and I’d like my cake to reflect that. Sadly, not a lot of mature jokes and puns come with twenty-three, so I might have to settle for something disappointing. 

I’m afraid of getting old. More so than I am afraid of failing. I don’t think I have ever admitted that to anyone. I have good reason to believe that this fear stems from my realization that failing means you have grown to some extent, but getting old does not necessitate growth. I am worried that, as time passes us by like a train I can only long to jump on, the fog will lift and people will realize that there isn’t much potential in me—that I wasn’t born to make the whole room shimmer, I only became a mirrorball by accident, an amalgamation of broken parts. 

We come back to the idea of your twenties being the best decade of your life. Society has projected this expectation that, in your twenties, you’re meant to graduate with a degree if not a master’s, party and travel hard, work a 9-5 corporate job that realistically is 9-9, attend pilates or futsal, have a stable relationship that will result in a marriage if not kids by the next decade, maintain two dozen friendships, and keep your sanity while you’re juggling all of those pins on a tightrope. While this success can be attractive when packaged neatly on social media, it always comes with battles we do not see beyond the screen. Nobody’s life is mapped out; not only does your success look different from someone else’s, but so does your happiness.  

It is one thing for society to emphasize ‘prime time twenties’ but another for it to shove ‘you’re running out of time’ down our throats. It conjures out of thin air this ticking time bomb that will cement our legacy when we turn thirty, as if everything we achieve thereafter instantly vaporizes into oblivion. If Robert Frost could stop to write a whole poem about choosing which path to take, I don’t think he was rushing to get to the destination. However, the reality is worse yet for women who are seen to have an expiry date while the men just keep getting wiser with the years. A woman is not a basket of fruit; neither is a man a barrel of wine.

Oftentimes when I find myself spiraling down the rabbit hole of ageing, I think about my mother and how she grows to be more resilient and graceful every year. She is living proof that aging can be a beautiful thing, and I do not doubt that you can find someone who teaches you the very same lesson. So, I beg of you to stop and think about this question that has saved me from this fear of growing old: Aside from that voice in your head, who else has ever told you you are not where you are meant to be? ‘Society’ is not a valid response, and likely, you’ll find that the answer is ‘no one.’ 

I think many people—myself included—forget sometimes that, at my core, I’m just a girl. I carry my sadness in my hands because they do not create big enough pockets for women. I want to see the world while I am young not because I carry a fear of growing old, but because I want to see the world as it is now, in all its turmoil and chaos so I might think about how I can ease them. There has been a girl living inside of me when I was a daughter and a sister, and she will continue to live there when I become a woman or a wife or a mother. She carries my dreams and love, and as long as I keep her alive, there is nothing too scary about getting old. I will not lose her with time. In fact, she embodies time.

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Anyway, I suppose this entire piece of writing has been me laying bare the thoughts gargling inside of my head. All of this is to say trying has to be enough sometimes; because if not, mirrorballs would just be broken pieces stuck side by side. This is me trying, and I say it’s enough.

Alternative conclusion written in March: A boy isn’t reason enough to stay and a job isn’t reason enough to go home. In the meantime, there are dishes to wash, laundry to hang, and stories to write because I am well-fed, well-clothed, and well-lived.