Over Troubled Water

I hope you're prepared to read something slightly over dramatic and most definitely unnecessary.

It's really not that late right now (the dependable clock in the lower right of my monitor says 11:03pm), but I sit here with a wealth of feelings I'd rather not deal with, but feel like engaging nonetheless. Manliness be damned, if I'm going to conquer these emotions I'm going to have to recognize their existence.

For the first time, almost ever, I sincerely felt confused about--of all things--myself. As you well know, I live in a pretty rural area and have very few 'friends', which is a huge struggle, for anyone. But lately I've been feeling so disconnected from everything else, I realize when I do communicate, I say things that are unusual, trite, and distinctively not me. I'm left wondering far too often, "Why did I just say that? I never say that." I'm 100% certain I'm simply under some spell--perhaps just tired--but I just do not feel like myself lately. I also noticed that my co-worker here often has impressions of me that I feel, aren't really me. Some of it is pride in that I care about my reputation. But some of my worries stem from the same thought process: why am I consistently...acting different? It's as if the lack of other people around me has caused me to somehow forget who I am in the process. A weird concept to be sure.

Maybe it has to do with another feeling I have to struggle with--physical loneliness. I live in an apartment way to big for just myself. I live in an area where I can't really communicate with anyone. Oh I know the language--not well enough to engage in meaningful conversation--but I do know it. Perhaps if I grew up in a small rural community such as this, I would appreciate it and love it. But as a foreigner who comes in at the age of 23 and finds no one his age, it's extremely difficult to feel the desire to talk to anyone. After all, the only reason I speak anything at all is because I want to buy something, or because I want to practice my skills of the language, which of course is energy consuming.

I've made a small handful of friends--other foreigners in the city, and I'm eternally grateful that there's someone else to chat with, play cards with, play in a mock-band with. But somehow, it just doesn't "cut it" for me. I feel a twinge of remorse to say so, as if certain people "aren't good enough" to "cut it" as my friends. Perhaps the idea that "it's the people that make the place" holds a certain amount of, falsehood to it. I would agree to the idea actually, but perhaps it can be said that people make up 90% of a place. To some degree, no matter how great the people, we all would rather just be with those people in another place.

I'm hopefully going back to Hong Kong in two weeks. I'm looking forward to it with sheer excitement and some curiosity. I hope to wake up and realize I'm still the same old fun loving guy who apparently likes to crack the same joke a billion times and still think it's funny.

Ultimately, I really feel like I could use some company. I leave the TV on most of the time while I'm home. I've simply come to want to hear that constant chatter of someone else's presence. Yeah, my greatest excitement absolutely comes from the opportunity to see my Hong Kong friends, my mom and uncle, and just to soak in the atmosphere, energy, and life of a place that bustles with...people.

Again, apologies for the completely unnecessary theatrics of this entry. I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow, feel perfectly okay, and proceed to contemplate deleting this entry. Which I'll probably do in a day.