Soo...The holidays are here! Ok maybe they already started like 2 months back when the big As ended. Well, i won't really say they we were holidays, cos you know how the festive season of christmas and countdowns just give you extra reason to be unnecessarily stressed! Haha. I've conviniently forgotten to include the numerous awesome catching up sessions with old time friends. Yep. Thrown in youth camp and slr, it was definitely a great time! :)

Maybe just some thoughts and reflections that have been staying with me over this period? Well. I like being free. I usually associate this strong desire to be so by combing the idea of my zodiac year which is the horse and that of its power to gallop! Like that of a stallion! I guess it originated from me being part of the red house way back in primary school where we happen to embolize the stallion as our house icon; something I remembered as being really proud of then. Haha. I also once heard this phrase while watching Dr. Dolittle 2 where his daughter inherit his miraculour ability of talking to animals. His daughter asked a newly captured horse why it didn't allow it's owner to tame it and put a yoke over its neck. And its reply was, ''I'm a stallion.'' It can't be controlled by mere reins. I was born to run free. By that, i mean to be free from responsibilities, from commitments, from relations etc. So after so many things has happened in the past, and finally putting away the emotional scars that were once badly inflicted on me at the worst possible time, another challenge lays ahead. Another battle which i'm not even sure of emerging victorious. Another fight which i seem to stand alone. A new phobia seemed to have develop in the course of the past year. One that i feel only God can help me overcome. If He wills. Will He?

Mm. Well i guess at this point of life, while by His grace i've managed to answer many of my lifelong questions, it also brought along more with it. And some of them which remained and perhaps will continue to suffice in the future will be: how much do your friends treasure you? Is our idea of the frienship a mutual and one of an equal understanding? To put the latter simply, are you the friend i can trust and confide, and yet myself also being the one you can trust and confide in? Much as I've tried to do away with so much thoughts about this issue about friendship in particular, because I'm more or less a rather independent and hate-to-rely-on-others-if-i-can-help-it kinda person, I've come to understand in the years that it consciously remains an important aspect of our lives that we can't simply remove and choose to ignore it. I guess ya know if youth is as they say a stage when people start putting on layers to mask their emotions from the crowd, i dare say i'm in a stage where yea, the mask is on, but can i still find a glimmer of hope for removing it from you? Can i continue to make excuses for you that oh, that's just another one of your masks, you're not really like that? Or do i even know the real you, anymore? Perhaps a lapse of time among friends often results in this. U begin to forget how to trust, how to open up to, how to allow others to do the same, how to... be a friend. Indeed if anything you can take away with you is that it takes two hands to clap. But the real question is, will you be first to raise this 'hand' - To willingly and so blatantly allow others to open the possible floodgates of hurt, feelings of being unappreciated, unreciprocated and uncared for? To reach out to others as u hold this small hope that they will respond back positively to you. Well i guess the truth is, not many or very few of us are willing to take it up. I think even for myself, as the experiences accumulate and lessons seized, I being to feel more reluctant to be this initiative to bare or bear this sense of vulnerability to others. This just well, continues to intrigue me.

So, in the year ahead, i've jotted down many resolutions. It's an old habit that came naturally to me cos of my clear forgetfulness. And i hope to achieve them of course! Haha. Okie so much for a penny of my thoughts. The year ahead is one that is definitely exciting, and challenging. But while we face individual struggles of our own, may we also be continuously surrounded by great friends who care and share these moments with! Not forgetting, above all, Jesus is our greatest friend, brother and help.