Do you remember knowing exactly what kind of person you'd be as you grew up? Do you remember making promises that you would succeed at ____ and never ____? I do. I remember looking at my future self of 20 at the ripe age of 13, and just knowing that my character, personality and ambitions would never waver.
I used to read novels about people who do all kinda of crazy stuff, and somehow still act like people with semblances of functional relationships. I wonder how they can wake up happily, knowing they lived a messed up life. The theme has spilled out into my own experience now...
Why is there no outline, or PPT for these parts of our lives? I would love it if someone sat down and typed out just what to expect in the years to come. (Animations and clips included) No one warned me that failing at things I've never failed at would happen, or that it's stumbling blocks from here on. The life manual that informs you of each type of mistake you can make, and the likelihood of its occurrence would be most helpful, (preferably complete with statistics and graphics).
Decisions seemed more clean, less ragged-edged, and I could look at my life with bright and unclouded eyes. I found the neat razor cuts of hard, but thought out choices easier than the bits of chopped up impetuous ones. When have you failed yourself, knowing it all the while, knowing your very self was betraying the wholeness of your character?
I think the part they never tell you about traveling, distance and growing up is the path gets darker and darker as you go. That bright guiding light that twinkled merrily at first dims over time, and it seems like the new shiny road you were on plunges suddenly into a mysterious wooded forest, or heady swamp. Five months in, and I have yet to burst out into a meadow where the light shines so warm and casts no uncertain shadows.
I've found a great deal of answers here in China...and maybe I would've back in the States, or maybe I would've stuck with what is familiar and comfortable. The answers I found, however, seem only to complexly intertwine with new and confounding questions I'm almost afraid to ask... questions I most likely can answer, but dread it all the same.
If given the chance to redo my time here, I can only say, what would be the point of that? What's the point of wondering how you can change things, when the realizations you had would most likely come about in another situation? This doesn't erase the times of pride or regret I've experienced, or change any decision I've made ultimately right or wrong. It is what it is.
Today the smog is thick and the air chilly. The ever present construction buzzes in my ears and I feel a bit restless, like my heart is preparing for a race that I don't know the start time of. My senses are in overdrive, and the cold blue light from the mountains casts a weary shadow in the living room. I want to run, I want to hide. Let me escape from this belaboring of my child-like wonder, and have some respite from the onslaught of all this life changing stimulus.
Home is an ever present need now. I need surrounding warmth, the softening effect of my loved one's nearness, and the familiarity of my world restored.
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