Dearest,

I turn 28 in 2.5 weeks.

There's something about my birthday month which always makes me feel a little melancholy... makes me look back and think, "What have I done with my life? What do I have to show for all these years of living?" And, with things the way they are right now, being in transition and facing uncertainty, I guess this year it's a little worse.

When I was younger, I thought I'd be married by now. I thought 27 or 28 would be a nice age at which to get married... graduate at 22 or 23, work a few years, meet the right guy, pak tor about two years, and then get married. I had it all planned out in my head. To me, it was a natural progression, something I never questioned: I would meet someone, fall in love, he would fall in love with me, and we would marry.

Life has so far proved uncooperative. *rueful smile*  As they say, man proposes, God disposes.

I don't know why I ever thought or expected that life would be so neat & tidy. Not meeting you "on cue", as it were, gave me the first glimmer that, perhaps, life might not always proceed as smoothly as I might like it to. Sure, not getting to study Mass Comm had been a blow, too, but it hadn't been that bad coz I'd still gotten to be a journalist later. My life's path, as I saw it, hadn't been knocked that far off course.

But this... this is something really outside my control. It is a mild thing, however, compared to what has been happening this year. A precursor, and maybe a warning, that things can veer off even more sharply than I ever imagined they would.

I thought journalism was my dream job, then I tried it, and it turned out to be -- well, not less than what I'd thought it would be, but different. Now I'm left with the question, "What next?" and the fear that, even though I think I might like teaching, perhaps I might again find that it is not what I thought it would be, and then where will that leave me? In limbo again.

It's the uncertainty that gets to me; the fear, also, that I might never find what I'm looking for. Even I don't know how to articulate what I'm looking for, so how can I know where to look for it? At least with you, I do more or less know what I'm looking for -- and see how hard it has been to find you already? :P  How much harder to find something that I can't even define?