I’ve fallen into a limbo. No longer a child, but still a
teenager. A few days ago, I reached the peculiar age of nineteen. Which
provoked me to ask myself… What on earth happened during the past 6944 days to
create and shape the person that I am today?
Well most importantly, I’ve had the pleasantly enriching privilege of meeting many interesting beings (human or non-human). I’m a bit of a butterfly, I suppose. Not to sound like a character from a children’s picture book, but I really do like making friends. One particular thing I’ve learnt in my first nineteen years of existence is that wether or not such friends remain or fade away, they have entered into my life for one reason or another. Wether you’re a shy girl, whom fate decided to place before me during a university’s admission interview exercise, or wether you’re a future magician who sat behind me at maths tutoring.
You might also be the girl who really liked to eat whole
tomatoes at school, instead of the more orthodox apple. This particular girl
later became one of my earliest ‘besties’. As a matter of fact my fervent
passion for healthy eating and good food stemmed from this very friendship many
years ago… in fourth grade. Since then, I began my habit of religiously reading
nutrition tables and analysing the nutritional content of the lunchboxes of my
peers. Piles of nutrition books and magazines filled my bedside tables each and
every school holiday.
With food in my mind all the time, I began to explore the
primary realm of domestics i.e. the kitchen. As the nutrition books piled up, so did the cookbooks. ‘One cannot think well, love well,
sleep well, if one has not dined well.’ Virginia Woolf couldn’t have been more
accurate. My apologies to any feminists reading, but I do feel quite at home in
the kitchen. Not to worry though, my future spouse will certainly be there too…
doing the dishes. A true man would never hesitate to wash the dishes upon which
his wife had presented her love and culinary creations. There it is… The
feminist undertones of my theatrical nature. Just a little something I picked
up from attending a girls school for the previous six years of my life.
I forget how old I was when sleep became such a (both
wonderfully and detrimentally) pliant object that I became so comfortable with
manipulating. One thing I do remember is the dearest friend who influenced
such poor sleeping habits, which I must admit still remains with me today (both
friend and habit actually!) Be it the pillow-muffled laughter or aching thumbs,
exhausted from racing with our thoughts and from typing on the tiny keys of our phones and keyboards. Is that dawn leaking through our curtains?
We’ll sleep soon! Note: this was also the beginning of my love for
coffee. No surprise there!
In birthday, graduation, wedding or any other celebratory speech, we tend to thank those who have inspired us to pursue noble goals and attain astounding achievements. We thank those who have raised us and those who have nurtured our growth and maturity of thought and morality. Yes, I am deeply grateful for such individuals. However this evening, I thought I'd take a moment to reminisce upon those who's seemingly subtle influence have made a rather significant impact on the little yet important things that make me who I am today. So thank you.
Love,
Julie T.