reconciliation

If you want it to happen - you'll have to carry the whole thing out carefully and quickly without me suspecting a thing.

Maybe you'll talk about the treacherous weather, describe a new recipe you want to try, gossip about your new coworker. I'll nod at all the right places, insert a few sympathetic sighs in between, flash you a reassuring smile before my eyes are back on the road.

Then you'll lock all of the doors, the automatic clicking sound drowned out by the singer on the radio. Remember to keep your face completely neutral, shaking of any body part minimal - any ripple I detect and your plan falls apart.

From your coat pocket you'll produce one of those handy Swiss army knives you swiped when you were a kid, the edge is still sharp. When I'm slowing down to make the next turn - the ball of my foot exerting just the right amount of pressure on the brake - you use all your strength to drive the blade into my right thigh.

I lose control of the car. It happens so quickly that I don't have time to feel anything, but I do turn to you for answers.

You'll quietly take my hands off the wheel. "I'm so sorry," you whisper, because if nothing else, you're polite. And then we'll sail - what a great feeling! - past the intersection, blinking traffic lights and faceless pedestrians, to a place where everything feels right again.

where do we go from here?

So what do we do now?

Now.

Yes, now. Now that I can't read you from across the room - remember when I used to able to do that? I knew every single thing about you. I understood you. And now - why do your hands feel so different?

I don't know. I really don't. I hadn't expected this to happen at all.

I don't know if I can do this yet.

We can. We have to.

July 20, 2009

I found coming back home such a jarring experience, and I don't know what to make of it.

It feels strange to come back to find that everything and everyone has pretty much stayed the same, nestled comfortably in the homes and jobs and relationships they have made themselves, when I have changed so much mentally and that they will never completely understand how I feel. It almost feels like I don't belong here anymore. I talked to my friend tonight who experienced the same feelings, and I know eventually that I will fall back into the old pattern, find a place where I belong. For now though, I feel a little lost and alone.

In Japan I found that I had things in me that I never thought I had: courage and confidence. All the things that people told me before I went were true: I have no sense of direction, cannot read maps, do not know the language, and I am a woman. They told me that I would never be able to make it alone, skeptical and amused looks crossing over their faces as I spoke excitedly about my trip. I somehow made it though: finding my hostels through sometimes cryptic instructions, asking people for help with my basically non-existent Japanese, navigating the main transportation systems in all the cities I went to, being smart, staying safe. Everyday was an adventure.

It was also an experience altogether just being on my own for extended periods of time. It got lonely, that was for sure, and I was made painfully aware of this when I sat alone in restaurants sipping my tea, or lounging around by the side of the street eating a crepe surrounded by high school students. But I met people from all over the world along the way; a few I got to know, some I just said hello to. I went to bed every night feeling exhausted, but excited for the next day. Most importantly though I learned a lot about myself.

On a train ride out to Nara I talked to a friend about my days in high school, where I was angry and "emo" and listened to depressing music and wore ties and spiky bracelets. I don't think I knew who I was, for the longest time. I acquired obsessions along the way, wanting to completely fit into a character that I knew that existed already, trading in old identities for new ones as time went by. I don't think it was until recently that I started to get to know myself, to face the flaws that I hate about myself and to want to change.

I think I found a lot of myself in Japan, and for that I am thankful that I mustered the courage to do it.

feeling, not thinking

Listening to him sing gives me goosebumps. It makes me feel alive. It makes me want to feel things fully without holding back.

I know I have trouble doing that, experiencing things head-on, good or bad. When I'm having fun with my friends sometimes I hold myself back, and remind myself that it'll end eventually. When I get disappointed, I tell myself it really wasn't all that important, and I push it aside. I think that's how I'm able to deal with things like break ups and failure pretty well.

I learned about self-deception, avoidance and acceptance in my psychology seminars, and most things hit home hard. I sat in those classes feeling extremely uncomfortable because I knew a lot of it applied to me directly.

The truth, or whatever version of it, can hurt and completely throw off your previous preconceptions of what your reality is. Maybe that's why people are so stubborn and refuse to let go of what they think is right.

Either way, I hope I can become a person who isn't afraid to feel and to see things clearly.

compassion

I was walking through the subway station the other day when I saw several people standing in front of a few posters. Curious, I stopped and went to see what they were looking at.

These posters had pictures and brief autobiographical descriptions of the heroes of the Holocaust; the people who secretly took in people who were persecuted, those who smuggled them across the border, those who employed these people in their factories so that they would escape the internment camps, spies who worked on the inside, and people who faked documents and birth certificates to save hundreds and thousands of people. Many of them were tortured and killed, but they continued to do these things until the very moment they were arrested and captured.

Reading about these amazing things made my heart feel lighter. But what made me feel even happier was that the people around me were actually taking a moment from their busy lives and from catching that last bus to stop and read the posters. We were just standing there, silently reading the descriptions, marveling at their deeds, taking the heroes' faces in. I found this to be a beautiful thing. I think at that moment, despite our differences in beliefs, whether religious, political, or personal, we all agreed on something, this shared humanity.

Maybe I've found what I believe in and what I want to continue living for. This universal belief in kindness, compassion, dignity, and freedom.

the heart

"...the experience of happiness, [is] the most dangerous, because all the happiness possible increases our thirst and the voice of love makes an emptiness, a solitude, reverberate."

- Francois Mauriac

happiness

When I get into these moods that I can't seem to get out of, I try to remember what makes me happy. And they're simple things really: lying down on the carpet and watching my cat eat, washing the dishes, holding a cup of hot water with honey and lemon in my hands, sitting by the window and people-watching during lunch, a good song, laughing with my friends. Why should I ask for more?

let go

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too hard on people, especially my sister. I wonder if it is my own pride that I can't see her suffering because I dismiss things that really do bother her, that I write off her behaviour as lack of maturity. Maybe I'm the one putting up the walls between us.

She called me to her room and I went begrudgingly, expecting her to whine about something unimportant. But she opened up to me (and this is rare) about what was stressing her out, that she couldn't sleep because she had all this pent up anxiety and worries. So I sat and talked with her for a few hours, told her of my own experiences. How I would lie in my bed for hours at a time worrying about the most trivial things, and how it's hard to believe in myself, too.

I want to be a better sister, one that doesn't judge so much, one that understands her perspective more, one that can see what she's going through even though she's putting up a front so that I can be there for her when she needs it most.

ambivalence

He placed his finger on his lips, and I leaned in.

That was the first time in months I ever felt something, and when I realized, with a sudden force, how lonely I feel.

I've been thinking lately that I tend to sabotage myself, that my avoidant relationship tendencies keep me from moving on and having a connection with someone because I'm scared of being vulnerable, of having these carefully built walls around me get taken down.

believe

Why is it so difficult to believe in ourselves?

I can see potential in people, wonderful things and truths and abilities in people that they don't think they have, but I can't see this in myself.

This may have some merit though. And I try to hang on to the words that people tell me, and I look at what I have accomplished so far in my life, and I try and try and try my hardest to believe.

holding on

For the past few years or so, I've been fortunate enough to have a wide network of friends who I love and care about. We sang to carols while wearing terrible Christmas sweaters, plotted and schemed for months an elaborate murder mystery party, held on to each other as we screamed and flailed together at concerts, talked about silly things late into the night under the sheets, and danced the night away, heavy eye-make up, spilled drinks, confessions and all.

But I can't help but think how impermanent all of this is, and that in the future I'll look back and think to myself, I was happiest then.

I want to hold on to this as much as I can.

when the night is over

When the night is over - when my eyeliner is fading and I'm trying to find my shoes, when the apartment empties itself of coats and purses and half empty beer bottles - I still want to sit here alone in the dark, take off my jewellery, and listen to the humming of the refrigerator, to the music in my head, to the steady beating of my heart.

drunken poet?

Some "poems" a good friend translated for me over text ;)

Flurrry of skirts and hardwiid floor amd toes on cracks and glasses
gclnking tofether

Translation:
Flurry of skirts and hardwood floor
And toes on cracks
Glasses clinking together

(I actually thought it said hardwild at first, which is a kickass
sounding word. Like a crazy new dance!)


Pink nails and flowery skurts and waiting and taxis at the fribt door
pomises when will i see you next

Translation:
Pink nails and flowery skirts
And waiting taxis at the front door
Promises when will I see you next


Tour handa unser my arms and there us the beat again over undr over
ubder and over again

Translation:
Your hands under my arms
There is the beat again
Over under over under
And over again