Previous post
First post and explanation
Next post
Perhaps it's just the stress of the past few days, or perhaps the foreignness is catching up with me, but I've been vicious homesick recently. It's coming out in my conversation with friends from HIF, I know. I'm sounding more bitter when I talk about Japan, less amazing discoveries and more irritated gripes. I've only been here three weeks -- I wouldn't think the honeymoon would be over quite so soon.
I find myself thinking a lot about people I've been in love with. Hell, even just crushed on. Music, which I've been using to remove myself from my environment when the need arises, tends to remind me of them.
Ani DiFranco comes on and I have a flashback to Noah bringing me a big bottle of Belgian beer on Valentine's day, us cuddling on the bed while we took swigs.
The Flaming Lips comes on and I'm dragged back to kissing Josh on the floor of his apartment, snow falling out the window, ceiling tinted orange from an overcast Chicago night sky.
A bass solo in the middle of a jazz album comes on and I get a vivid image of Aiden bent over his instrument in wife beater, intense and coiled in a world of his own making. What the fuck, brain. I never even slept with Aiden. He was straight.
These are good memories. I'm glad I had the opportunity to make them. Not everyone gets a chance like that, much less several in the span of only a few years. But I want to hold them -- I don't want them holding me.
There's more. Even people I've never been in love with romantically, close friends, acquaintances, are called forward by the stuff I've been listening to. Gabriel, Ribqua, Ophelia, Kit, Qeling, Sibyl, other friends I haven't made up fake names for on the internet... people I really want to talk to. People I miss terribly, that I don't see enough of, that I've forgotten too many things about.
I have a telephone, but using that would be the appropriate solution. Following through on appropriate solutions is not one of my strong suits. In any case, they're asleep when I'm not and vice versa.
I'm lonely here. I don't feel I have any right to say so, given the friends I've made and the intimacy of my host family, not even to mention the fact that I'm only going to be here for as short a time as two months, but emotions are inconveniently impervious to reason that way. I'm lonely, I miss my friends and family, and things happening in Japan right now are fading into the background behind a glaze of memories tinted blue.
I don't understand why the love demonstrated by those close to me, those who barely know me, and even those who I don't know at all isn't enough to satiate me. I'm addicted to the feeling of being liked, I think. And a relationship seems like the ultimate hit.
That's not healthy. I shouldn't 'need' romantic love to 'be whole.' Bullshit. If I'm not a whole person already, then I won't have much to offer someone who might fall in love with me, will I? I'm frustrated by this loneliness when I'm not in a relationship and senseless dissatisfaction when I'm in one. It's not as though no one's up for trying. But, of course, why not, I have to combine relationship-dependency with extreme selectivity and conflicting standards.
I guess I've improved somewhat. Previously, I'd thought I had set impassable barriers to falling in love. Now I've made a step forward. People can get through, but only if they're not particularly interested in me.
Every day in every way I'm just getting better and fucking better, eh?
But to step back from the "wah wah emo woe is me I don't have a boyfriend" wangst and maybe for a second return to the GIGANTIC FUCKING FOREIGN COUNTRY I'm supposed to be here to experience, I've been kind of pathetic lately. I just go to school, try not to get too many withering looks from my teacher, use the internet till I figure out it's not going to make me feel any better, then go home and sleep or do homework. My Japanese has hit a plateau, I don't really have the time or energy to explore, and as for those judo lessons I was excited about--maybe if I wasn't taking two or three times longer than everyone else finishing my homework. I guess I must be drifting in and out of daydreams too often to get anything done. No one else in the class seems particularly concerned with the work load.
I spend more time writing these damn posts than I do talking to my host family. It might help if my vocabulary extended a little beyond the words "delicious," "interesting," "good," and "difficult," but I could still talk more than I have. It's just sometimes I get so tired of saying the exact same things, incorrectly, over and over and over a-fucking-gain because I lack the works to express the ten billion or so thoughts lining up to be said all at once. If I ever get fluent in this language, I swear I'm going to use the words 'oishii,' 'omoshiroi,' 'ii,' and 'muzukashii,' as seldom as possible. They're tasting real fucking stale.
But all the new words I'm learning just never happen to be the ones I need right now.
If I ever need to express the concept of 'to liquidate' though, for example, I guarentee you I'll have forgotten it.
My friend Jono, who spent two and a half years here in Japan, was right. Highs and lows are amplified when you're abroad, especially if you only catch 30% of what's going on around you. But right now, I'm riding one hell of a low.
I miss you. I wish I could talk with you. Even if I've never met you before. Even if you just stumbled here from wherever. I miss you, and I'm really sorry that's eclipsing the opportunities I have here.
Something positive? Well, I'm getting very good at apologizing.
Author's note, this post was written about two months ago. Things got better ^_^