Here's To My 24th Year

Happy Chinese New Year everyone. It's the year of the Rat, the sign under which I was proudly born just about twenty-four years ago now. I was twelve the last time the Rat came around and I hardly remember it - the next time, I'll be thirty-six and that freaks the crap out of me. I figure I should go ahead and make this year a good one, while I'm still relatively young and able. (Dear Goodness, please let me be young and able at thirty-six too.)

Seeing as it is 'my' year, I'm going to assume and/or hope that this means that things will be looking up for me. Because honestly? it's about damn time. The last twelve years of my life have been tumultuous, but appropriately so. I went through the latter half of childhood (and the end of childhood is never a good thing - age seven, I miss you!), then through my pre-teen years (during which I looked like a man), then through teenagedom aka hormonal hell, and then I finally passed into my twenties in a drunken stupor. I got pimples, had braces, got glasses, got my heart broken, fell in love for the first time, broke a few hearts myself, got an education, figured out my alcohol tolerance, travelled a lot, found best friends for life, sorted myself out a little more, and finally, grew up. I'm looking forward to the next twelve years if only because it means that I get to do more stuff. I'm going to be finding someone I want to marry, I'm going to get married(!), I'm going to have kids, have a family, a home, a job - all that stuff that most people do before they're thirty-six. It sounds all status-quo and boring and 'normal' and what-have-you, but dagnabbit if I'm not excited about it all. The next twelve years are going to be big. And it's going to be good.

The only thing, albeit a superstitious thing, that makes me wary is that the number 24 is quite a hunk of bad luck in Chinese/Cantonese culture. The number '4' can be superstitiously translated to mean "death" and with the '2' tacked on in front it basically means "easy death" or "you are sure to die" or "bad things will happen to you so run for your life NOW!" Good thing I'm not really superstitious. But the Cantonese in me has a way of turning around and ganging up with cosmic forces to bitch-slap me in the face. But I won't think about that. Twenty-four is going to be good, dammit, GOOD.

So far, I'm enjoying the fact that this is going to be My Year. Now to contend with the idea that I'm going to be turning twenty-four in a few months... I soo do not want to talk about it.
1:19 pm