There were countless encounters since arriving here that Anne questioned her true purpose of being here. She looked at the shabby buildings looming across the streets, stared at the faeces strewn along the pot-holed road and the pigs gnawing at the garbage and cows wandering into coffee shops like barns, and peered into the run down ruins that looked like the remnants of World War II instead of a prestigious medical college, as they claimed. In the course of the strings of activities - whether she lost herself in the shopping spree for essential items, or purchasing the staggering amount and thickness of books, or dashing about the streets in a risky auto ride - the same doubt kept jumping out at her:
Is this what you really want?
She thought of her local coursemates - how they studied so intently even thought it was the first day of class, how they sat so demurely with their noses buried in books and not moving a muscle throughout the lecturers and even the hiatus in between, how they were so eager to answer every questions - and saw in them the little girl who played with medical kit instead of Barbies and wrote about being a doctor in every one of her essays. But what she didn't know was there was a price for every wish. That was why Ariel had to give up her voice for a pair of human legs and Aurora had to pricked her finger before the curse could be broken. Quid pro quo, that was how it always had been. And this time, it cost her the one most precious thing in her life - happiness.
It wasn't all the long pages of medical jargon or burning the midnight oils which concerned her. In fact, Anne pretty much enjoyed that. But why her? She had never done anything that wasn't her own choice, so why should she start doing it now?
Perhaps that was because she had no money, or perhaps it was the obligations she felt towards her family, and maybe part of her pride wouldn't permit her to study locally when all her friends went overseas.
But lately she had been weighing all these against her long lost happiness, and suddenly they all seemed extremely insignificant. She could be an M.D. instead of a a M.B.B.S.. She could be studying accountancy for four years in Pahang. She could even be a salesgirl who worked three jobs per day. At least she would be happy.
Of course, everyone else had been telling her to optimistic. But being optimistic was just like a six-year-old telling her mum to buy two more daddies at the supermarket should he never come back again. It was an act to mask the agony within oneself. Optimistic or not, a person would still be unhappy.
Anyone would had known her would thought that Anne was a straight-A and ambitious person who knew better than anyone the consequence of falling away from the straight-and-narrow. In truth, Anne wasn't that tough. All she wanted was to be free of all the rules and regulations and responsibilities and expections. She just wanted to happy.
