The Quandary of Being

    (Dylan Moran)

Now that my life is finally slowing down and I have more time to sit alone and muse about life without rushing through it, I've wondered. A lot. 

There is no right answer to how to live your life authentically and realistically. Yet I want the answer to this question. I want so desperately to know, yet I have this strange feeling that deep down within my soul, I know the answer without consciously telling myself the answer. 

It is as if I am in the dark room, not knowing where the door is and yet I am instinctively moving towards the door, wherever it is. 

I've asked myself again and again: have I known the answer to the ultimate question, would I find some measure of comfort in this answer? 

I don't know. Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is powerful. 

I am finding more paradoxes than singularly constant truths in life. My current thoughts about life do not even bear a small resemblance to my thoughts one month earlier or five years earlier. It is altogether bizarre to watch myself simultaneously growing up while having this sense of going backwards. 

People I've met in life seem supremely confident with their special answers to the question of living your life authentically and realistically. Nevertheless, in spite of their confidence, in their darkest moments, they confessed their eternal perplexity about life. 

Why do we all give out advice about life, acting as if we have seen it all and known it all, while we are forever baffled by the turns and twists of our lives? 

I like to think that we all subconsciously want to protect each other from getting burned out by life and encourage each other to take life easily. We all want to see each other finding happiness and love. 

We also want to be proven wrong.  

Our conscious thoughts and conditioning trained us to see life as an exhausting marathon of trials and errors in all areas of representing and expressing the self within the appropriate boundaries of our society's expectations from our membership. It seems to me that our society--our world--treats us all as if we are the inconveniences rather than gifts to our communities. 

We roll our eyes at others' loudness, silence, eruditeness, stupidity, individualism, collectivism, stubbornness, flexibility, and the list goes on. 

We cannot win. Yet we all are fighting mightily to win. To win somehow. To win magnificently. To win respect and adoration from other members within our society in spite of experiencing the constant sense of being an inconvenience to them. 

This contradicting sense of making ourselves a contribution when we are already a contribution by the sheer existence of our beings fascinates me. 

Why do we have to do this? 

Please pause here with me. I do not ask you to answer this question. I do not want an automatic answer. Think long and hard about this question . . . why do we do this to ourselves? 

Why?

Do we do this to ourselves because we do not love ourselves enough and thus depend upon others to judge the exact amount of the love we deserve based on how we make others happy and loved? 

Do we do this to ourselves because we love others so much that we weigh our deserving of love based on how our love is being reciprocated by others?  

When I was traveling around the world last year, I was disconcerted by my inability to answer the question: how do I should live my life authentically and realistically? 

My ideas and desires for my life are not always perceived as realistic by others. As the result, I often receive advice to get real about my life and to set more concrete goals. 

Yet my personal experiences are telling me again and again that my goals must be at least flexible enough to have room for the surprises forever issued by life. How concrete should I get about my goals? How flexible should I be when a surprise pops up and changes the game?

Should I be real when I know life is not real enough? That life is just one big illusion that began from the second I was born and will end at the second I die? What is real, anyway? 

And now, what about living authentically? How authentic should I get? Should I speak the truth always? Should I filter my truths in order to be gentle to others and to imply my openness to their truths? How much should I filter my truths? 

What is my authentic self? Who am I? Should I even bother to define who I am or just let me be? How far should I go to let myself be without questioning myself? How often should I question myself in order to get better acquainted with myself?

These questions were exhausting me, and over the course of being constantly bewildered by my questions and debates, I found myself growing increasingly despondent and aghast about going on with my life. 

What should I do with my life? It seems like a prodigious task just to live and to live without knowing when my life will end. 

I could not decide how much I should invest in myself and in which part of myself. I have so many dreams I want to fulfill. I was so afraid that I might not have a chance to fulfill them all.

What if I die tomorrow? What do I want to do today? 

What if I die 50 years later? What kinds of long-term plans do I want to initiate today? 

Existential crisis major time. 

This existential crisis was one of the main reasons I decided to return to the United States after nearly ten months of traveling. I wanted to calm down and confront these questions without constantly changing my surroundings--which constantly triggered even more questions about life. 

It took me months to calm down and to accept the ambiguousness of life. 

It took me months to finally settle down on the answer I can live with. 

Here's my answer, at this very moment: stop thinking so much and take more risks in telling my truth. 

I am pushing myself to embrace my ideas and desires and to make them happen. If they mess my life up, so be it. I can always move on and change my way of living. I am reminding myself every day that I am always free to make changes in my life. 

I am pushing myself to embrace the challenge of telling my truth. If my truth is too harsh, so be it. I learn and find a better way of sharing my truth. If my truth is too gentle, so be it. I learn and find a better way of insisting on my truth. I am reminding myself every day that my mistakes set me free. 

I want to owe up to myself and to owe up to the kind of life I choose. 

I want to feel more free and more truthful about how I see life. 

I want to stop feeling like an inconvenience to the world and to never apologize for my existence. 

I want to be. Just to be in all my beauty and ugliness. To perfect my imperfection. 

Dammit, I am whoever, whatever, and however I decide I am. 

I am what I dare to be. 

ASL vs. English: Bilingual Thoughts

Everyone before they realized this irresistible baby was deaf

I was born into a hearing family. An educated hearing family headed by a loving mother, to be exact. It made all the difference in my life. 

I hit the jackpot in being born to a mother who had been trained as a Special Education teacher. She knew nothing about American Sign Language and Deaf Culture. She knew everything about the importance of getting your facts before making a decision. 

That was exactly what she did when she found out I was deaf four days before my second birthday. 

Confronted with so many options, so many possibilities, and so many interventions from different experts, my mother eventually chose to honor my Deaf identity and instill in me the pride of being Deaf, being fluent in two different languages, and belonging to two different cultures through bringing me to Deaf people, teaching me ASL and English, and discussing with me about the difference between two worlds, both of which are very, very precious to my heart. 

One of those good ol' family pictures

My mother learned ASL for me. My father also learned ASL, to the best of his abilities. One of my brothers fueled in me the competitiveness to claim ASL as my primary language by learning along with me.

My mother chose a Deaf school for me in order to give me access to the world she knew nothing about--the Deaf world. This school taught me to embrace my so-called difference from my parents and brothers and from many others. Along with my mother, this school nurtured in me the potential to be the best version of who I am by believing in me. 

Me with the first of many teachers in my life and the one who knew me practically before my 'linguistic birth'

Then I left a Deaf school for a mainstreamed school, where I was the only Deaf student among thousands of students. With a Special Education teacher for a mother and a D/HH teacher for a dear family friend who had known me before I even knew ASL, I was guided, nurtured, and protected throughout my four years in the public school setting. By the time I left for college, my confidence in being a Deaf-identified, ASL-signing young woman was unshakeable, and I was prepared to return and to embrace the Deaf world that I had neglected during my high school years. My life afterwards had capitulated to this confidence and emphasized its value to me as a human being.  

Because of so many fortunate and extraordinary factors in my life, I am reaching the point in my life where I am very much capable of fulfilling my own potential because of all the tools I have acquired and all the love I received throughout my life. I feel so lucky, so grateful, and so proud of where I am right now. 

What is my point in telling you all these things?

Basically, I am informing you that I had grown up bilingual and bicultural. I was raised to move comfortably between the Deaf world and the hearing world. I was raised to understand ASL as one of its native* signers and to understand English as one of its native* writers. 

I am also adding this new piece of information: I am a trained sign language linguist with an obsession for pinpointing exactly why we all are quietly struggling to understand one culture or the other culture, one language or the other language. Why being bilingual and bicultural can be such a psychological pain in the ass sometimes, especially when we throw the history of oppression in the mix?

So many factors. So many explanations. So many theories. So fuckin' many reasons! 

I am here to tell you that you have every right to think one language is better than the other language. That is a classic sign of being bilingual--you are so conscious of the difference between two languages that you are forever changing your mind about which language is the best to express yourself.

Remember that both languages are linguistically equal in every respect of explaining your interaction with the world. It is you who decide which language is the best in representing you in specific circumstances. It is you who decide which language is failing you and which language is supporting you. Your countless experiences with each language play a large role--an exceptionally prominent role, actually--in prompting you to favor one language over the other language in each situation. 

I am here to tell you that you have every right to secretly think one culture is better than the other culture. That is a classic sign of being bicultural--you are so aware of the striking difference between two cultures that you find yourself carrying around the culture of your own--the personalized, blended culture emerging from your exposure to two cultures. In our particular case, being bicultural is a challenge because we are also coming from a minority group whose culture has long been misunderstood and oppressed by the other culture, which also happens to be our other culture as well! If you take pride in belonging to both cultures and believe these cultures are equally beautiful, more power to you. If you find yourself appreciating one culture more than the other culture, remember to honor your unique identity as a member of two cultures whose perspective of the world is deeply nuanced based on your interactions within each culture. 

What a fascinating, complex people we all are. 

I am telling you these things because I want you to take comfort in all the challenges and joys of being bilingual and bicultural. If you grow up in a hearing family who knows nothing about your Deaf culture, you are still bilingual and bicultural because you are actively participating to a certain degree in both cultures. If you grow up in a Deaf family who raise you mostly in the Deaf culture, you are still bilingual and bicultural. 

If your English is comparably less proficient than your ASL, you are still bilingual. When your English dominates your ASL, you are also bilingual regardless. It is a misconception that you must be equally fluent in both languages in order to be bilingual. A horrible misconception. 

Becoming bilingual is when you become an user of two languages. Many linguists often hesitate when they are asked pointedly about how to assess one's fluency in each language. How could we measure a person's skills when language is one of the most complicated systems ever created by the humankind? How could we know the difference between pure ASL and bilingual/multilingual ASL, especially when so many know at least one other language besides ASL? How could we dare to venture out our guess about one's proficiency when there are so many factors to consider--the way one is being assessed, one's mental and emotional state at the time of assessment, the environment that covertly elicits one's way of speech/signing, and many more? 

How could we? 

Whenever I meet someone who grew up bilingual and bicultural and listen to this person's confessions about how they feels they do not live up to the ultimate example of being bilingual and bicultural, I am often overwhelmed with this urge of getting this person into my mind so they can collect all the information I've accumulated throughout my life about sign language linguistics, bilingualism, biculturalism, and life experiences and then find peace in their identities. 

It is okay to question your bilingual identities. It is okay to wonder if you are not bilingual enough. It is okay to worry about your fluency in each language. It is okay to prefer one language over the other language. 

I am here to tell you that these thoughts and feelings are the classic signs that you are bilingual thorough and thorough.**

* Okay, the term "native" is sorta controversial (long story, and I am afraid I'll end up writing a dissertation on this term. Better to keep it short and sweet) . . . the best term in my case is "early signer" because I've gone language-less for the first two years of my life. As for English, 'proficient' is the best term to describe my background. I instead chose 'native' because, well, ASL and English are the first languages to occupy space in my mind and to shape my identity. I found myself through these languages. 
** The same remains true for those who are multilingual, multicultural, and/or beyond description in terms of identifying yourself. To those who are so, I hope you will find a way to honor your beautifully intersectionalized identity. 

Now is the Time

So! 

As some of you have noticed, I basically disappeared from the blogging world after returning home from Europe. 

I was exhausted. Physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. I was quite literally exhausted beyond exhaustion. 

Ten months changed me so much, in nearly every piece within my soul, and I wanted nothing more than re-examining the startling transformation of my soul and how my ten-month trip around the world affected me. My view of the world was altered, and I was terrified, and I wanted to know how and why. 

When Violet and I first started out, we unanimously agreed that we want to explore ourselves and our relations with the world. We wanted so desperately to make this journey our year to remember, to grow, and to discover. We spent our first night together in India discussing our dreams, visions, and so many expectations we had from this journey and from each other. 

Little did we know, this journey was to be our trip to the very essence of our selves. 

Now, before I get ahead of myself, traveling is not necessarily the only path to find the essence of your self. I believe that everyone is always on a journey, orbiting around the essence of themselves with many accidents that abruptly take them to the very core of their souls. We are forever learning, we are forever experiencing, we are forever thinking.

Life is the potential to be fulfilled, an empty classroom whose curriculum is constantly designed and redesigned by the one who chooses the classroom. 

I designated traveling as the class to be taken and learned in the year 2014-2015. 

To be honest, I naively thought I can totally take charge of what I will learn from this journey. 

I was wrong. 

I learned more than I ever expected to learn. I grew more than I ever expected to grow. I went farther than I ever expected to go. 

Traveling is no joke. It is not a break from life. It is a total immersion of life with different responsibilities. Ten months had been one of the most difficult, painful, exhilarating, rich, and beautiful times ever. I will never forget this trip. 

Some lessons were plainly commonsense, but somehow they hit the nerve. Other lessons shook me into the state of sheer astonishment. Many lessons turned my attention to the aspects within myself whose existence I haven't fully realized or forgotten. 

So, yeah, I was changed and it totally unsettled me. 

All of a sudden, I have to start all over in learning who the hell I am. 

Now that I am back in touch with my soul, I am making peace with Elizabeth Version 26.1. 

I am now remembering my childhood passion to be a contributor to the global community. I am now remembering the unsatisfying, impossible-to-fulfill desire to see the world. I am now remembering the importance of listening to my heart. 

The fire within me has been engendered once more, and it is hotter than ever. 

And for the first time in my life, I have enough patience to keep this fire going on, enough experiences to feed branches to the fire, and enough confidence to go near the fire. 

Now is the time to stop being apathetic. Now is the time to push myself out there and fight for my right to be. Now is the time to be me.

I am determined to fulfill my childhood passion. I am more than willing to do anything it takes to keep my heart beating while pursuing my dreams. Even if it means taking opportunities that are not necessarily aligned to my greatest dreams--all I care is to seize these opportunities to learn from them, to connect to others through them, and to see the vision of my dreams better. I am a monkey in the jungle, leaping from a branch to another branch, searching my way out of the jungle. 

What I really, really want to do?

That part, I am not too sure. All I know is that I want to travel the world, to enter as many countries as I could enter, to share my knowledge about community development, and to remain a part of every community around the world. I want to be the ultimate Connector. I want to be the ultimate global contributor of knowledge, of better living, and especially of happiness. 

What a tough dream to achieve. But I believe in myself more than ever, and I vow to continue believing more and more in myself--and in others more and more. 

I want nothing more than lying in my bed many, many years, incredibly ancient, incredibly wise, and incredibly fulfilled as I look back to my life and know I have made my life worthy to be lived and worthy to be a part of other lives. 

I want to live my life passionately, lovingly, and joyfully. 

Here I am, writing my deepest wish with you as my witness. 

I am here to live out my life. I am here to make a difference, however big or small it may be, in this world. I am here to share life with you in every way and in every manner. 

With that being said, I am determined to make this blog useful and informative for you to read. Sometimes I will open my heart to you. Sometimes I will share what I have learned with you. 

All I want is to show you that every life makes a difference in my life and that I am here to make a difference as well. 

In Retrospect

As cliched as it might seem (I cringe just to type it), but as every fiction has a scratch of truth . . .

Traveling around the world for nearly ten months--or nearly one year as some like to tell me--has certainly changed me. 

Of course, we always change over time, regardless of what we have done with time.

Yet it is true. These ten months abroad taught me so much, too much, that I am quite overwhelmed just to imagine whether I could apply these lessons to life. 

Would I ever remember these lessons? I don't know. 

Yet what I've learned so far, I can tell you in simple terms.

Let's start with one of the greatest lessons I've learned: relationships.

Relationships are hard. To maintain a relationship with anyone, be it your parent, child, friend or even a supervisor, is hard.

I have a profound respect for everyone who work hard on their relationships. It is painful to watch a relationship crumble in spite of your efforts. It is glorious to watch a relationship blossom. 

We take relationships personal. A relationship is such a personal thing, and we cannot be impersonal about people we care about. And to complicate it even further, we also bring our relationships with ourselves into the relationship with someone. It fascinates me just to think how we fight so hard to remain true to ourselves and fight others so hard to get validated for being ourselves. It is difficult to juggle yourself and someone else as well. 

I've made many gross mistakes in my relations with others because I've often chosen to remain true to myself and/or because I've often chosen to devote myself to others' well-being. 

And I have to tell myself over and over to forgive these mistakes, to take them as lessons, and to have faith. 

It is hard, but I am trying. I have to try. I must try to love and to be loved. 

And I am remembering that others are trying, too. I have to remember. I must remember that others are trying to love and to be loved. 

It can be exhausting. However, we do this because love is all we have and want for ourselves and others. 

It troubles me when one of us says that, because we could not find someone to love and to receive love from, there must be something wrong with us.

I don't think it is true. I like to think that we all are equally capable to have healthy relationships and bad relationships. Factors that pop up in these relationships are what trigger us to react or to respond. Sometimes we are loving enough to respond well. Sometimes we are too confused, too scared, or too angry and react before we could think clearly. We are quite complex beings and we deserve to recognize and understand this complexity within ourselves. 

I think it is all about timing and endless patience with ourselves. We are so imperfect that in a sense we are perfect in our own originality. 

It is brave to remain true to yourself. It is hard to figure out a healthy formula of staying true to yourself and allowing others to stay true to themselves. It takes so many lessons, and because we all are so uniquely shaped, we learn them differently. 

While it is important to love yourself and to have faith in your progress, I think it may be equally important to have faith in others' progress as well. How can we insist that others are so flawed that they couldn't love and be loved properly when we are just as flawed? 

It is hard to have faith in others because it is like taking a leap in faith, to blindly waddle into the sea of endless episodes of war and peace. When should we stay long enough to see all the episodes? When should we swim back to the shore?

It is hard, oh so hard, but when we manage to find a way to love and to be loved, oh, how worthwhile it has been! 

Why did I mention relationships? 

Because I've spent ten months meeting so many new people, deepening friendships with so many old friends, and developing profound affection and respect for so many of them that I want to burst out in agony for my failure to show them my gratitude and love and burst out in joy for having reached a point where I am able to shower upon them my gratitude and love. 

They changed me. They taught me so much that I am beginning to re-define my very existence. 

That's what I've learned: relationships are hard but oh so worthwhile. 

The other thing I learned from my trip is: 

I will never stop transforming. I will never stop growing up. 

I have managed to learn how to admire and respect myself before this long trip. I even went far enough to promise myself I'd remember how to love myself. 

This admiration and respect for myself had been shattered to near oblivion during ten months mainly because so many things happened that I barely had time just to recognize how they affected me so. It was getting more and more exhausting to listen to my own advice to love myself. 

I've forgotten myself in my pursuit for something indescribable. I forgot to admire and respect my own beauty of being. I spent so much time agonizing over my self-hatred that I forgot to turn my attention to my ability to love myself. 

It took a long time and many episodes of war and peace before I finally remember to love myself again. 

Now, looking back to these ugly moments, I smiled. These ugly moments amused me; they had transformed into black comedy and I smiled at how I have grown so much. It felt like I've gone through my teenage years all over again. I was a teen once again. 

So I am always growing up. My teen angst will come back to suck me into the wormhole of self-hatred and I will have to Interstellarize myself back into self-love. 

It feels very much life to me. I am alive because I change. Change is the only constant and to be constant is to change. 

Let's see if I still think that way a few years later! 

One lesson that surprised me the most, and it is ironic to call it a lesson. The lesson is that life is undeniably full of surprises. 

For ten months, I have no real routine and on some levels, no routine affects my life in a way that surprises keep coming up. Every time I plan and intend to follow through this plan, I am so often confronted by an abrupt turn of events that force me to change my plans. 

So many surprises led me to drastic weight loss and gain, illnesses, hair loss, new friends and reunions with old friends, arguments and resolutions, sorrows and joys, changes and renewal in my dreams and passions, cultural differences, and especially to continually discover how small the world is--and how big it is. 

I now could not tell you what will happen to me after I return home. Surprises haven't cooled off yet and I am still flying with the wind to whichever direction it goes. I change my plans almost constantly that I can't keep my head straight. I can't keep promises. Life is holding me hostage to its surprises.

And I kinda like it. Kinda. 

Admittedly, I am rather afraid of no surprises. I had grown accustomed to the unexpected that I am a bit unnerved by the thought of dealing with the expected. But then, life is full of surprises and I will surprise myself with the way I deal with the expected. 

What a surprise to discover how so rich life is in surprises! 

There are so many lessons I could talk about, but I will end with one more lesson:

Traveling is not necessarily the time to discover yourself. It is not something you can take lightly--or heavily.

Traveling is everything and nothing. You can make it a journey of self-discovery. You can make it a silly memory to treasure. You can even not travel and still travel in other senses.

Traveling is what you make it to be. 

I feel changed by my ten-month trip because I want to grow some more. Perhaps I got way more than I bargained for, but I suspect they are exactly what I asked for, consciously and subconsciously. 

I am glad I decided to leave home last September. And I am glad I decided to come back.

I am glad I have this life. I am glad I am alive. 

I am glad. 

The Next Round

Once you get going, it is hard to stop.

In fact, it seems to me that it takes more willpower to turn a page than to linger on the same page.

Fear is holding my hand, pausing me in my decision to move forward.

I am afraid of the unknown. I am afraid of returning and finding that things remain the same. I am also afraid of returning and finding that so many things have changed.

I dream big. My desires are powerful, and I feel rather small in comparison to these desires that govern my choices. 

This long journey around the world changed me. That is certain. And I also remain the same. I know that when I return home, I will see the world differently but my rhythm of being shall remain the same. 

My soul is growing bigger, my mind opened up to more possibilities, and I am giving myself more freedom to simply be. No demands on improving myself. No pressure on proving others I deserve their respect, their praise and particularly their love.

I know exactly what I deserve: me, myself, and I.

I have myself right from the very beginning. I witness every single second of my being and am very intimately acquainted with my thoughts, my fears, my passions and my moments.

How could I hate myself for being so brave to be myself?

How could I hate myself for daring to live my story? 

How could I hate myself when love is all I have to offer to myself? 

I will have my weak moments. I will cower before fear and take an easy route. I will fall into pits of my stupid decisions. 

But for every weak moment, there is a strong moment. I will stand up to fear and push forward. I will leap over the mountains of my wise decisions. 

I know so because I lived through these moments again and again, before and during the trip around the world. I am grateful for my strength to grow from these moments and especially grateful for others to help me through these moments when I feel l am failing myself. 

I imagine, in time, many years later, I will look back to this long trip around the world and forget what I promised to remember. I do not need to remember the trip. My mind is filled with too many memories. No use in clinging to certain memories and to make them define my life.

 

All I need to do is to continue on with my life. This big trip, the long memory that has altered my views on so many other memories, will live on among many other memories, waiting for many new memories to come along and to transform the meaning of this particular memory. 

And I also discover that life is full of surprises. Surprises beyond the surprises I created for others. Surprises beyond my wildest dreams. 

I had bought a return ticket. I am going to return to the United States. 

When? I will not tell you out of the interest to preserve the opportunity of finding quietness in my transition from a globe-trekker to a city girl. 

Before I bought the airfare, I informed my best friend, who had given me so much support and love throughout my joys and pains, that I was ready to come home. I think.

He pushed me through my anxieties of returning home. Like I've said before, once you get going, it's hard to stop. 

He was basically holding my hand as I officially scheduled my hello to the United States.

Only to give me the greatest surprise ever: he is going to fly home with me. 

He is flying to Europe to pick me up and help me--or drag me--through possible emotinal breakdowns and customs, to the United States.

This extraordinary surprise told me that I will be okay. That life is full of surprises no matter where you are. That my journey does not really end there. 

I am going to continue writing. I am going to continue sharing my thoughts and stories with you all, no matter where I am.

For my journey has not ended. 

Down the Rabbit Hole

As my high school French teacher would say to catch your attention:

BOOM! 

Yes, that's right, I am very much alive despite weeks of no writing.

And yes, I suck at following up on my previous post!

Here's the summary: I hitchhiked. All the way from Perth to Melbourne. Five days. Five rides--three for the first day, two for the second day, and I stuck with my fifth and last lift-giver, a wicked lady named Ruth, for the last three days.

I've tried writing the story about this experience, but instead of my fingers pounding away on the keyboard, my forehead was constantly meeting the keyboard. I was frustrated by my inability to describe the exhilaration of hitchhiking for thousands of miles, placing my trust in the hands of total strangers, and letting the wind literally blowing me to the next destination.

Then I realized something. This experience was dear to my heart, and I feel rather selfish and protective of this particular story. Thus, it would be wise for my own sanity to save this beautiful story until it becomes something I could freely share and let it be exploited, interpreted, and nuanced by others.

So, this fascinating tale of hitchhiking through the desert will not be told anytime soon.

Instead, I am going to tell you what's up with me lately.

After basically falling apart at the end of my Southeast Asia trip, I arrived in good ol' Australia promising myself that I will be gentler towards myself and more proactive about my next step in life. 

In the meanwhile, Aussies greeted me like an old friend finally coming home. I've made so many friends, some of them likely destined to be lifelong friends, and came to regard Australia as a place to call home. It was painful to say good-bye to the Aussies; I wanted so much to remain in their hugs and to extend my stay in Australia. 

But move on I must. My soul grew restless and my heart pounded fiercely as I found myself moving on to Europe.

Why Europe again? What's up with my lifelong fascination with Europe?

I don't know. And I am returning to Europe to explore this question more deeply. 

The end is coming soon. I can feel it. I hunger for it. I am ready to cool down and to move on to the next chapter of my life. 

Three biggest questions linger: Where will I end up? What will I be doing? When will I come home, wherever home is? 

I am still in the process of answering these questions. 

That's the gist of my life on the surface. 

As for me . . .

Why did I not write lately? 

Writing used to be my joy and my refuge. Writing helps me to clarify my thoughts and to better perceive the world I am seeing. Writing sharpens my understanding about ideas and experiences and tends to show me new ways of perceiving life. 

So, why did I stop writing for quite a long time?

It was simple. 

Writing became like a quicksand. Every time I tried to write, it was as if I suddenly sink into the quicksand, unable to find words to yank me out of this forsaken sand. 

I was struggling to express myself properly. I wanted you to understand me, to feel connected with me, and to live through me. Yet the way I saw life had so rapidly changed that I found it difficult to step outside of my inner world and tell you what had been happening to me. I felt incoherent just to explain myself.

And I felt pressured to present an entertaining piece to delight you. It felt as if I began to conceal pieces of truth from myself in order to satisfy a certain criteria for blogging. I was desperate for some measure of quietness and particularly to understand why and how I ended up feeling more confused than ever. 

So I just stopped. I stopped to take a deep breathe and to take a long, hard look at myself. 

That was when I realized I had put so much value on traveling itself to the point where I drove myself crazy for what I have perceived as the greatest failure of my life.

Let me explain what I mean exactly. 

You see, I looked at others who traveled and returned home to immediately start careers, set up houses, get married, etc. Their lives started as if they suddenly knew what to do, thanks to the world they've seen. 

I secretly hoped for this kind of ending.

However, the longer I traveled, the more doubtful I became of this ending.

I still have no fucking idea what to do. 

Oh god, after eight long months of crawling my way through multiple cultural shocks, untimely illnesses, exotic cuisines, sleepless nights, and long queues at airports, I still have no answer to what I want to do in life? 

Wow. 

I was so astonished by my apparent failure to discover a new step in life that I just fell apart. 

This falling apart was unfortunately accompanied by an alarming shredding of my once gloriously voluminous hair, which of course devastated me more than I would like to admit. Such a vain human being here. 

But now?

I'm calming down. Still anxious, yes. Still wanting to freak out forever, yes. Still questioning my sanity, yes. 

However, I am now working on accepting the idea that I may never know my future with the same absolute certainty I used to have as a child knowing she will go to college one day. 

I am now re-interpreting my apparent failure in a different way. The more I met and listened to others' stories of their harrowing times, the more I realized that all our failures in life are actually our greatest gifts. Every failure conceals a gift. 

For example, this apparent failure of figuring out my next step in life is actually giving me a gift of honesty and deeper connection to myself. By becoming more in tune with myself, I don't mean loving myself more. I'm simply more honest about my thoughts and feelings about myself. I find myself openly admitting that I am angry with myself, that I feel betrayed by myself, and that I want nothing more than love and happiness for myself. 

In that process of feeling such a loser, I am learning to be okay about myself and my so-called ineptness. I am learning to remind myself more often that I want only love from myself and to prompt myself to offer myself love. 

I am beginning to think that we all are faking it in life. We pretend to have specific likes and dislikes, to have an identity, just so we can at least control something in this mess we call life. To have an identity is to have a degree of security. But do we truly know who we are? 

I don't think so.

Is it a bad thing? No. 

It may be worse forcing ourselves into a specific identity shaped by our beliefs and ideas about ourselves than allowing ourselves to simply reveal ourselves regardless of any circumstance, belief, or condition. 

I have placed so much value on my identity. I was clinging to my old ideas about myself because I had grown up with those ideas and was rather comfortable with them. They were my favorite crutches. 

I am being unfair to myself. Instead of telling myself what I like or dislike and telling myself who I am, I must permit myself to simply be. To be is to reveal. 

Is it easy? No. 

Why?

Because I literally have no clue what it means to just be. 

I guess that's what life is for. To learn how to be. 

Have You Seen My Rose-Colored Glasses?

Note: I was hesitant about posting this particular entry, as it is not a Pollyanna-ish one about traveling. However, I thought some of you might appreciate knowing that even a traveler like me couldn't avoid having those thoughts while going abroad. I would like to emphasize that I am getting by all right :-) 

My weight is fluctuating. My hair is coming out in lumps. My skin is becoming darker and more freckled. My flip flops are wearing out. I am more confused than ever.

I am falling apart. 

In other words, I am an ordinary adult currently dealing with an existential crisis. 

Or more accurately, I am simply a blabbering fool who is mystified by her ability to live a life, whatever it is. 

Again and again, I sit down and write, eagerly pouring my heart into a story, only to walk away in frustration. I do not know what I want to talk about. Hell, I don't even know what I am talking about. 

Life confuses me. I am okay with this confusion, but I loathe this terrible sense of wondering, "Okay, so why do I bother doing this?"

I write a truth only to come back and find it a lie. I write a story with no beginning and no end. I say things I believe in only to realize I no longer believe in them the moment they are uttered. I sprout out everything that means nothing. I talk like I know what I am talking about only to admit I do not even have a remote idea what I am talking about. 

I am plainly a blabbering fool. 

Am I supposed to tell you that traveling has transformed me into this even more wonderful, wiser, and happier individual?

Am I supposed to help perpetuating the myth that you are nothing if you do not travel at all? 

Am I supposed to be grateful and appreciative every single second that I am far away home, that I am living my dream? 

Perhaps I should insert cackles between these questions. A cackle of self-doubt, a cackle of confusion, and a particularly Voldemort-like cackle of existential crisis.

Nothing is the truth. 

You are what you choose to be. If you manage to be even more wonderful, wiser, and happier, so be it. If you are the exact opposite, so be it.

If you feel that traveling is a change you long for, then travel. If you feel that traveling will bring nothing into your life, then don't travel. Either way, you live the life on your own terms. You do not miss out on anything, no matter what others might tell you otherwise. 

If you could not manage to muster up a small ounce of gratitude and appreciation into your soul, make peace with that. If you could, be peaceful with that. 

See?

I am not even sure why I am saying all these things. I could be wrong. I could be right. 

I am talking because I am confused. I am talking in hope someone will interrupt me and go, "Hey, sweetie, that's okay" while patting my hand and solving the mystery of life for me. I am talking to sort out life. 

I find myself starting to disregard people's advice when they go against my desires. They may have good intentions. They do love me enough to offer advice, but I find my eyes shut to their advice, particularly when it comes unsolicited. 

Am I getting old? Am I starting to prefer my own wisdom, however fucked up it might be, to those of others? Am I learning the gift of following my heart?

Ah, I don't know. 

To me, the meaning of life is changing. While I am blabbering on, pretending I know what I am talking about, deep down inside me, I am vigilant like a hawk. I am watching myself. I want to study why I pretend to know it all and why my appetite for life is so fucking unsatisfied. 

Just by listening to my inner chatter, I am left breathless by the depth and the width of my unknowingness. I have no fucking clue. Thoughts float around inside, playing the chord with emotions that appear and fade away in their responses. 

I am adjusting to this existential crisis. In fact, I suspect there is no such a thing as an existential crisis.

I mean, you exist, you don't know what to do with your life, and then you die. All these three things are probably what we all would agree upon as three most constant facts of our existence. 

Ah, I could be wrong about that. 

I could no longer tell the difference between right and wrong, kindness and meanness, and all the other shades of life. 

I have tried to be right, kind, and all the good stuff. God knows I do, but sometimes I fail even at that because of many unexpected events, some of them involving only the state of my own mind.

What does it mean to be all the good stuff? Am I simply pleasing people when I should just let go of the fact I could not be perfect?

What does it mean to be imperfect when people poke at your flaws and insist at you improving your flaws? Am I supposed to tell them to shove it up their arse? 

I have been wondering about what it takes to be truly myself. It certainly takes a lot of strength and a lot of self-love to just be myself. It is hard. Especially when I am not sure what it means to have a self. 

Frankly, I am feeling so anxious and so shaken up by the shock of actually having a life to live out.  

Am I okay? Yes, I can honestly say yes. I eat. I sleep. I smile. I have my moments of happiness and sadness. I feel human. 

Am I not okay? I can also honestly say no. I freak out. I overthink. I do the opposite of what I intend to do. I feel like I am losing control over myself. I feel abnormal. 

In my quiet moments, whenever I could shut myself up, I recognize that regardless of whether I am okay, I am gradually growing into someone who is coming to terms with herself and is working diligently at making peace of having a life to live out. 

Phew. Isn't it exhausting just to be human? 

Ah, I will be all right. I've seen so many people managing to get by with their lives. Simply by accepting their unknowingness, they make me feel somewhat reassured. I am managing to get by so far. 

After all, I've managed to get myself thousands of miles away from Perth by choosing a rather unconventional method, a method I shall attempt to spin into a sweet tale in my next entry.