10 years away
2/11/18 09:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
invitanSo today is the 10-year anniversary of me leaving home. November 2, 2008 was a point of no return. The disruption, engagement, push and pull of leaving home changed me forever. For the better or worse, it's one of the most important days of my life, despite it starting out so wearily. Note to self: maybe refrain from talking about discrete dates as "most important" - no one date marks a beginning. Why would the beginning be pertinent upon the shift of geographical location, and not, say, the first day of class in Singapore?
Ah, to hell with Nietschze. I'm not here to change the world.
So 10 years have passed, and I don't think I will go back within the next 10 years either. But in another 5 years, another milestone will be reached: I'll be officially away from home the same amount of time as I was home. Not that it matters too much. I doubt the first 5 years of my life is as densely populated with life experiences as a year in the past 10 years. Ah time again - it stretches and shrinks as it wants, what is the point of measuring it in years, months, hours, seconds?
I'm ranting again. The point is, so much has happened. I just got out of a 10-day hospital stay. Liver abscess. Killer of my Canadian dream. I'm sitting here, alone in my bedroom, heart pounding wildly and vulnerably. I feel lonely.
So 10 years since I sacrificed my privacy ("boarding" school, hah!) for friends and knowledge, since I ran away from my miserable middle school life, I'm here all alone. It's not true, the past few days I've been so indebted to the care of women of color, of women from all over the world in this little pocket of Brooklyn. I've been surrounded by languages, stories of cares in third world countries, people who saved me, people who almost killed me. I've been indebted to the love of Vietnamese girls, my sisters whose blood I don't share.
And then, through it all, I'm still a mess. I've been a mess for the past 10 years. Sometimes the mess get to wear a "put-together" sleeve, like the first few weeks of this semester when I operate on a routine. And then something happens and I realize that I'm bursting out of the seams, all these nervous bundled energy, the anxiety, the desperate feeling that I'm alone in this world. That I'm scared to wake up and face another day, that when I swallow I feel bitter.
I feel not ready. I don't think I'll ever feel ready.
Ah, to hell with Nietschze. I'm not here to change the world.
So 10 years have passed, and I don't think I will go back within the next 10 years either. But in another 5 years, another milestone will be reached: I'll be officially away from home the same amount of time as I was home. Not that it matters too much. I doubt the first 5 years of my life is as densely populated with life experiences as a year in the past 10 years. Ah time again - it stretches and shrinks as it wants, what is the point of measuring it in years, months, hours, seconds?
I'm ranting again. The point is, so much has happened. I just got out of a 10-day hospital stay. Liver abscess. Killer of my Canadian dream. I'm sitting here, alone in my bedroom, heart pounding wildly and vulnerably. I feel lonely.
So 10 years since I sacrificed my privacy ("boarding" school, hah!) for friends and knowledge, since I ran away from my miserable middle school life, I'm here all alone. It's not true, the past few days I've been so indebted to the care of women of color, of women from all over the world in this little pocket of Brooklyn. I've been surrounded by languages, stories of cares in third world countries, people who saved me, people who almost killed me. I've been indebted to the love of Vietnamese girls, my sisters whose blood I don't share.
And then, through it all, I'm still a mess. I've been a mess for the past 10 years. Sometimes the mess get to wear a "put-together" sleeve, like the first few weeks of this semester when I operate on a routine. And then something happens and I realize that I'm bursting out of the seams, all these nervous bundled energy, the anxiety, the desperate feeling that I'm alone in this world. That I'm scared to wake up and face another day, that when I swallow I feel bitter.
I feel not ready. I don't think I'll ever feel ready.
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