A reply-entry, because there's so much to say =)

*grins* You sound so much like a parent, my dear girl, "watching you grow up" and "come into being"... But on the other side it's strange, I think, to see so many people around you with such an awareness of the world around them. People who "know", who have "grown up" and "matured" in so many ways.

And there I stand, wondering if I'm not lagging behind in some way. Makes me think of the Happy Prince standing above the town, watching life bustle around him, watching people in the far off corners of the town suffering... And yet there he is, still, glistening with gold beneath the sun. Or the Hunchback of Notre Dame leaning over the stone parapets, wondering what life is like "out there".

Yet oftentimes life within is so... secure, so... sheltered (*pause* what is it with this seemingly common belief that I need to be protected...? the number of times I feel like I'm supposed to function as an ornament in a glass enclosure, sigh), so homey, that you're lulled into the sensation that there is no more the need to venture out. Except that this thought is mere madness, because the world and its realities surround you still, because there is a life, a real life, that needs to be lived, if only to survive.

I don't think it'll kill me to live, lar =P

We're growing still, all of us. I used to be terrified of change, of having a sudden drastic change that will rob people from you, that will turn friends into strangers. (Remember secondary school and the -ahem- complicated choir politics that resulted in all those bizarre change in character? But then again, upon hindsight, I suppose certain characters already possessed this potential for change *frowns* Haiyah, the whole affair was just very freaky lar, eek.) But then change is not always bad, I realised. You have changed as well, quite a bit, too, yet you're still essentially you, this same perceptiveness that sees more than before, this almost rebellious impulse for freedom, and that innate, abstract, intuitive understanding and ability to visualise stuff quite like no other =) And a whole lot of stuff that comes with being you, that I don't think can ever be lost even as you move on in life.

I always think--or like to think, rather-- that even as all of us are moving through life in all these different directions, and are changing, we're changing simultaneously, and changing together. Which is a comforting thought because it no longer seems so estranged. That there is still an odd kind of equilibrium between age-old friends. There must be a reason for having met all these certain people and going through a rough patch together, like some sort of a beginning that we can all turn back and relate to even at a later point in our lives, the formation of this firm bond of trust and relatedness that you know still remains a part of you, change or no change...

I'm starting to ramble, and even go out of point from the original reply, but I think you'd know what I mean =) I'm still adapting to changes though, but I think the real big changes are not quite in place yet. Wait till all these secondary school friends get attached *grins* That'll be quite a change to behold. And then we'll all have to re-adjust all over again -_-

Yet you all would still matter the way you are and have been, and mean just as much =)