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.