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My Story - Pt 7

I was still in a hurry to grow up. The rest of my twenties were spent wrapped up in a new career path. Another path I didn’t necessarily choose for myself. After I graduated, I got a job with a small start up in a customer service role. That job shaped and moulded me. As I grew and progressed in the company, the company grew around me. I allowed myself to be swallowed up by the job. I became a manager. A people leader. The second in command to the boss. It was challenging and chaotic. Sometimes it felt unjust. Other times it felt like we were doing things no one thought we could do. I thought I was thriving. Sometimes I was. Sometimes I was just surviving.

I learnt so much. In the most chaotic and undisciplined way.

Writing was a distant memory by this stage. Years of study meant I only knew how to skim read now. As progressed along this career path, the only books I read were business or management ones. I read only if I had to. I started consuming other content. Netflix. Instagram. YouTube. Words meant less and less to me.

We sold photography equipment through inspirational content. The brand was about selling self-actualisation through the pursuit of mastering photography. I wish I was making that up. I spruiked creativity to my team, to customers, to creators. The irony of selling creativity whilst creating nothing myself is not lost on me.

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“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.”

— Anaïs Nin

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For a while, I thought I was going to be a humanitarian lawyer. Something my parents were not actually that fond of because they believed there was little to no money (or prestige) that came with that career.

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My Story - Pt 6

It would be fair to say that I am a world class procrastinator. It’s probably one of the few skills I perfected during my time in law school. Had it been an actual subject I could take; it would have been high distinctions all round.

I procrastinated on trying to figure out what I wanted to do. All I knew was what I didn’t want. I let myself be led by life a little. In the last year of my studies, I started working full time in retail. I was already having to extend my degree by six months so I would have enough units to graduate. I made myself believe that the reason I wasn’t graduating with my friends was because I chose getting work experience and earning a bit more money. The biggest and best lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

I did eventually graduate. My two degrees are collecting dust in the spare room as we speak. I have no regrets about seeing my law degree through to the end. I told myself it was better to finish what I started than to give up. If only I could apply that same ethos to my writing.

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My Story - Pt 5

I can honestly say that for the first year or so of Law School, I genuinely thought I was going to be a lawyer.

It was exciting to be away from home. I was an independent child and found it easy as a slightly older child to adjust to life as a uni student. I worked part-time. I attended classes. I studied. I tried my best to be the law student my parents wanted me to be.

I was enrolled in a dual degree; alongside Law I was also studying and Arts degree in International Relations (a logical choice I made at seventeen because of my love of Modern History). For a while, I thought I was going to be a humanitarian lawyer. Something my parents were not actually that fond of because they believed there was little to no money (or prestige) that came with that career.

I found studying law very, very challenging. The theory wasn’t so bad, but I struggled with its application. All through high school I had enjoyed good grades. Even in the subject I found difficult, if I worked hard, I came through on top. I was not prepared for how difficult law was.

But I persisted. I thought I had a plan. I just had to follow it. What I didn’t realise was that I was following a plan without an end goal. I was oblivious to the fact that my fellow law students were plotting out their career paths, researching, networking, defining their goals. I was just there to go to law school. I had no idea how to become a lawyer.

I was about halfway through my degrees when I realised this. It dawned on me quietly. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I already felt like I didn’t quite fit in. So, I hid from it. Classic avoidance. I just kept on pretending.

I stopped going to most of my classes. I started picking up more shifts at my job so I would have an excuse no to go to class. I failed a few subjects. I had to do summer semesters to make up my grades. It was only towards the very end that I owned up to the fact that I didn’t want to be a lawyer.

I had no idea what I wanted to be.

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“And all at once, Summer collapsed into Fall”

—Oscar Wilde

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“Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t wanna make eye contact while telling it.”

— John Green

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I was always in a hurry to grow up.

“The years between eighteen and twenty-eight are the hardest, psychologically. It’s then you realize this is make or break, you no longer have the excuse of youth, and it is time to become an adult.”

— Helen Mirren

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“I am the dark and I am the light, I am the moon and I am the starless night sky. Fall in love with all that I am or please, do not fall in love with me at all.”

— Unknown

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My Story - Pt 4

I was in such a hurry to grow up.

When I reached my senior years of high school I focused less and less on writing. I shifted my focus instead to excelling in my schoolwork because I believed it was the key to gaining freedom. If I did well in school, then I would get into the university I wanted, which was far away from home, and I could live my life independently. That was the extent of my plan. I honestly didn’t give much thought as to what I should study or the career I was choosing for myself at age sixteen. It was just a way of getting out of my small town and away from my parents.

Lawyer or Doctor. Those where the career paths laid out before me by my parents. I didn’t know what other jobs or careers were out there. My parents couldn’t tell me, and I didn’t know who or how to ask anyone else.

I never saw myself becoming a doctor. Helping people appealed to me, but I had next to no aptitude for Maths or Science. Lawyer it was then.

Becoming a lawyer was kind of a big deal in my family. My stepbrother passed away before he completed his degree. He died when I was an infant, so I have no memories of him, but he was my dad’s first child. My older brother dropped out of law school when I was in high school. It was the great family shame for a long, long time. No pressure on me then.

I copy pasted the family dream into my life and set about trying to achieve it.  I ticked a lot of boxes along the way. I got good grades. I was school captain. I was well liked by teachers and peers. I stayed out of trouble. I got accepted into a good university.

Then I turned eighteen and moved out of home.

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I can't quite see over the hill. I just know you're at the top waiting for me.

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My Story - Pt 3

I was twelve when I completed my first original story, start to finish. I can’t quite bring myself to call it a novel. Back then though, I certainly believed it was.

The story was about family. It began with the end of one family, and then followed the discovery and making of a new chosen family. It was a fantasy. I wrote it at an age where I was really struggling to relate to my own family. First generation Asian Australian. Living in a small town in far north Queensland. Second child. Destined to be stereotype. Lawyer or Doctor. No exceptions.

Writing was my escape from that reality.

There’s nothing quite like raw adolescent emotions to fuel your writing. You don’t really understand what you’re feeling. You just know that you’re feeling a lot. Some teenagers act out. The introvert in me hid away in my room, smashing the keys of an old Macintosh keyboard, struggling to get the words out quickly enough.

I poured my soul into the words. I was amazed when the words kept coming and I had gotten past the beginning, well through the middle act and neared the end. It’s one of the very few things I ever wrote to completion. The funny thing is, I don’t remember how this story ended.

It exists somewhere still. On a CD. Maybe even a floppy disk. If I ever find it, and the courage to read it, I wonder what it will make me feel? Pride? Shame? Nostalgia?

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Writing is my escape from reality.

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"Kryptonite - Pt 2"

By Jess Young, age 19.

Desire never really ages, does it? Reading what I wrote back then, I'm both mortified at my obvious infatuation and impressed by my unbridled desire for pretty words written on a screen.

I craved those pretend games… I craved his perfect words… I craved every sinful moment. Addiction is sweet, sugary and it melts in my mouth… every… single… time.

And then the games stopped. Times changed and I thought I knew what the right thing was to do. I thought I knew what I wanted and gave up addiction… for logic, sensibility and stability. The games might have stopped… but I never stopped craving.

A year came and went and suddenly, logic, sensibility and stability weren’t the things I wanted. Suddenly I remembered I still craved. He was always there. Popping in and out of my life but I always did my best to remind myself that I had given it up. I had quit the addiction. But that was a lie.

He worked his way back into my life, with those words and before I knew it, the addiction was back. It suddenly it wasn’t just words anymore… there were looks, gazes and little smiles that promised sweetness and desire. Every look, every little smile was like fuel to a fire that blazed hotter and more dangerously than ever before. His stares and his words would be my undoing.

Love was there. Hidden beneath the folds of superficial conversation and moments of sweet affection. Love was always there… on one side or another. Lost in the constraints of time and space, it was a love that wouldn’t survive the harshness of reality. It wouldn’t survive the distance between him and me.

I still ask myself, is it real? Or is it just pretend?

He tricks me, with those perfect words and those adoring stares. He tricks me and I trick myself. And I don’t want to know if it’s real or not. I just want.

I want… always… my addiction… my everything… my kryptonite.

His perfect… perfect words… Addiction is sweet. Sugary. Sinful.

The End.

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Thinking about it now, it feels magical and romantic.