Fridays and 27

You are waiting for Friday to come but then you’d turn 27

27, huh?

You know it’s starting to get real when you’re at the age where people starting their first season in 2000s comedy shows. You name it. FRIENDS, How I Met Your Mother, New Girl.

Phoebe, Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Monica and Joey

I know some posts make it feels like a reassurance that 27 of age is just a starting point. Yes, sure. A starting point.. of a confirmed happy ending and successful TV series?? But my life, on the other hand. Not much of a comedy show, more like a movie directed by Christopher Nolan. Slow paced, confusing conflicts and familiarity with ironies.

I made a lot of promises to my older self when I was younger. I promised not to be distant with my parents, I promised to always be a fun big sister, I promised to always be “the light in the room”. And of course I didn’t fulfill any of it. With each passing year, I can feel my self changing. Slowly but sure, I’m losing the will to actually trying, the will to fulfill those promises. So it’s not like I forget about it. I’m just starting to break them─voluntarily.

Even as I’m writing this, I just remember that I made promise to myself to record last weeks of me being 26 so I can compile them into one dramatic video, but turns out I filled my last weeks just waiting for each week to end. Every Monday, I’m counting how many hours does it takes to get me to Friday.

I know the universe is not that lazy, therefore there’s no such thing as coincidence. So my last day of 26 being Friday, the day that gets me dragging my unwilling body throughout the week, somehow got me feeling blue. Friday should be the day I treasure the most but then I remember that I will turn 27 tomorrow.

I’m not that kind of person who burdened by society’s pressure to achieve some things at certain age. I’m worse. I’m burdened by the inevitable changes that I will encounter in the future. And by being 27, “the future” is no longer 40 years away, but 2 or 3 years ahead.

I read something along the lines of..

“the days are long but the years are short. I was laughing in midterm break until I blinked and woke up being 30”

That line shook my denial soul to the core. I did blink and suddenly I’m 26!

My friends─my dear, dear friends always teasing me about how we won’t be talking to each other in a few years because we then would have our own life and family.

Sava, Rifki, Adila, Fauzi

Adila, Temi, Jemi

Bene

HEEBIE-JEEBIES.

It’s never funny for me. I’m not sure if they’re in denial or coping, but I know that tease is possible. I am not the same as 2025’s Zhira, 2020’s Zhira, or even yesterday’s Zhira. So for something to shift is not a Doctor Strange situation but rather another Monday. And I’m so not ready to let go of everything I’m used to looking forward in Fridays of my 20s, but I know it’s not something I have choice in.

Careers, fall-outs.. marriages.

I can’t decide if it’s a late-20s-lucidity or I’m just not a grown up inside, but I often told my friends and my self that I will not change anything about our hangouts if I ever get married. We would still have sleep overs, trips, cafes stroll or even impromptu 3am parking lots’ sessions. They frowned their eyebrows and inhaled their half-burned cigarettes, “We’ll each have a life of our own. That’s the way life is. Some things are meant to change, no matter how much we wish they wouldn’t”

Okay shoot me in the head.

In the 5 stages of grief, which stage is being 27 and what age is acceptance? Do I still need to go through decades of anger, bargaining and depression until I’m 80 without guarantee to ever achieve acceptance?

Shoot me again.

Sorry if anyone reading this is looking for answers or assurance, but I didn’t write this because I’m clear in the head. I’m overwhelmed, lost and in active mourning of future changes that my life hold for me.

I’m not sure that accepting my Fridays, my friends, my looking-forward-to events, people and my self again would change is a form of love towards life no matter how much those so-called wise people are gonna brainwash me to believe. When people are afraid of the idea of something repeating endlessly, here I am, holding my $1 One Wish Willow wishing that my 20s could remain forever on repeat.

There it is, the reason why I never watch the last episode of any series ever.

Someone told me I have a remarkable memory because I tend to remember events, texts or he said she said better than most. But really, what is a person if not memories? What is life if not a natural object to nostalgia?

Bring fate down to my eye level, if He likes changes so much, if He made life for the sole purpose of a cycle, if God forbid the eternity of a moment, then I’d remember them, store them, rebuild them in any form possible to human’s limit. I’d store moments in pictures, footage, songs, writings─hell, I’d even store them in someone’s memory so even when I’m gone, the moments, people, me, my family, my friends, my fridays would still exist in every cycle of life. As a legacy, as a mockery to fate if must be.

I have been waiting for Friday to come this whole week.

And now it’s Friday, but I’m turning 27 tomorrow.