No one believes it when they’re children; everyone says it when they’re older. I wished away my childhood and yearned to be older because why would I want to drink coke when my parents drank out of fancy wineglasses; why would I want to go to bed early while my older siblings stayed out late; why would I play with teddy bears when I could sleep alone like a big girl.

Exams are being marked; medical aptitude tests have been scheduled; universities are being chosen.

Now I miss it. I miss the feeling of running away screaming in the playground during a game of chasies, feeling like I was faster than the wind that beat against me, and returning to the classroom panting with bloody knees and a grin on my face matching that of a triumphant warrior returning from battle. I miss the innocence of perceiving God as an old man smiling down at me from the clouds and the comfort of my guardian angel at my side. I miss having decisions made for me; of who my friends were, of where I would go to school, of what extracurriculars I was involved in.

I am seventeen; I know I am still I child and I remain ignorant in so many ways that I am sure anyone forced to read my whingings will find them simultaneously hysterical and grammatically incorrect.

One of my teachers frequently described school as a train that got faster and faster as the years went on. I feel like the train is forcing me down a route that I haven’t fully chosen but it’s so fast now that I cannot safely jump out. I feel like I started off the year at a crossroad between medicine and writing, and everyday has had me hurtling further and further away from the latter to move towards the former. Money has been sent on medical aptitude tests, conversations at home are peppered with tips on applying to medical universities, and it is now expected that I will pursue medicine as a career. No one mentions an alternative anymore; as has been emphasised for the past several years an English degree in this economic climate is considered idiotic and a waste of money. I feel like a bride contemplating jilting her fiance at the alter because I keep wondering if it is too late to back out. I want to save lives, but – as pretentious and arrogant as it sounds given my limited grasp on the English language – I also want to provide people with reason to live.

In many ways I feel like I am standing alone on the shore as a tsunami wave rises. I have only a month to decide whether to remain standing and allow the water to sweep me up and carry me like driftwood along the existing current towards medicine. Or I could run fast far away from the flow of water and play with fire instead.

But tonight I do not chose to fight or flight; tonight I look back to the happier easier times of childhood when inconsequential decisions were made for me. Yet remembering that blissful feeling of freedom makes me wonder whether I should allow my parents to make one final life altering decision on my behalf by closing my eyes and welcoming the tsunami that is already hurtling towards me at a horrifying rate.