I love the Lunar New Year. Not just because of hong bao 紅包: red envelopes filled with money for children, students and never-gonna-buy-a-house-twenty-somethings from their aunties and uncles. 

谢谢! Nor is it the banquets of seafood and noodles washed down with copious amounts of chrysanthemum tea. 

What the Lunar New Year offers is another chance. Because the New Year (Gregorian Calendar edition) is way too easy to fuck up. The pressure to do something, anything! Maybe it’s a summer music festival: gram-worthy matching outfits, the game of bath salt or MDMA, and the black hole memory the morning after. Or it’s drinking too much wine at home, earnestly sharing all the resolutions you’ll break in a week and conking at 11 to snooze your way into a great new beginning. 

I love the Lunar New Year, but my Mum 吗, is convinced 2022 is the year I’m gonna absolutely go through it. On some high-level horoscope buzz, this applies to every other tiger zodiac sign out there. Like my brother, who’s exactly 12 years older than me. 

Tai Sui, the guardian god of the year, is having it out for us. So I’ve promised 吗 I’ll be wearing new red undies to ward off the bad luck. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if you happen to be turning 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84, or 96 this year, think about some red hot pants huh?  

I’ve corroborated this ominous prophecy with my other friends of Chinese descent, and being in your ‘zodiac year’ ranges from absolute destruction, turbulence and turmoil to the most neutral prediction: ‘a year of change.’ After all, change can be good or bad. Or both. 

I already get super nostalgic and tender when it comes to the new year so it’s been very much “Reflection by Disney’s Mulan (1998)” for the last wee while. Beyond the excitement of how much I’ll grow in the next year, I’ve also been aware of how much I’ve changed since my last zodiac cycle. 

I’m wondering if 12-year-old Sherry would be proud of me. 

As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to grow up. In my mind, being in my twenties was going to be the certified ‘actual best years’ of my life. I would be hot, confident, independent with money. Note: It kinda is, and isn’t. 

I spent high school studying the ways to be the perfect balance of quirky and basic. It’s 2015, and Tumblr, cat whiskers, and punched out 3D classes were all the craze. I listened to The Naked and Famous religiously walking to and from school.  

I did this because I’m a shallow teenage girl. I did this because it’s a response to the impending realisation that women are always judged on their appearances and performance. (cue: Gone Girl cool girl monologue)

I felt insecure because there were kids at my school who lived in mansions by the beach and my parents ran the coffee shop that served their parents. I thought if I had a Karen Walker necklace and Country Road bag, I could pretend to have the financial privileges to achieve my dreams. 

I read Janet Frame and Hera Lindsay Bird and idolised ‘indie art girl’ writers Jenny Zhang and Tavi Gevinson. I even went through a phase of carrying around On the Road by Jack Kerouac wherever I went. To this day, I still haven’t read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. 

If my teenage self bumped into me, I think she'd be proud of me. Maybe slightly intimidated. 

But I also think I need her help. The mid-twenties feel like another puberty, and the indie art girl with the Yu Mei clutch isn’t who I want to be. 

I need her help:

Because I’ve been working so hard on getting out of my parent’s house, I don’t know how to reconcile with their apology for being absent, for being harsh, and for always working. I can see them getting older and they want to go on the holidays we missed growing up. 

Because I’ve turned into a workaholic. My self-worth is tied too closely to my career, even though it’s been the lifeline for more independence and freedom. 

Because I don’t want to be a rainbow tick greenwashing hypocrite of a mouthpiece, furthering the agenda of colonisation. These words might mean nothing to you, and I don’t want to become a boomer in which these words mean nothing to me. 

Because I feel like I gotta be ‘that’ girl. You’ve seen her on Tiktok. She drinks green juice, can afford therapy, does yoga and bullet journals. She’s super into self-improvement. 

Because fuck that girl. Wellbeing culture™ is classist AF. I want to be myself. But like???

Because it's the year of the tiger, and the next time it’s going to be ‘my year,’ I’ll be 36. Ah shit.