Walking up the stairs from the subway, I am hit with the smell of something spicy. It’s a foreign smell but is all too familiar. The harsh aroma of Chinese spices and stir fried something or another slaps me in the face. Stinky tofu and roasting nuts vendors align the streets. Obnoxious entrepreneurs hastily walked up to me throwing there goods in my face trying to get me to purchase. Am I back so soon? Or did I just never leave? Was my 7 month sabbatical back home to the states a dream that I am just now waking up from? I will never know for sure. I lost my consciousness somewhere on the plane. That 11-hour flight seemed to drag longer than they usually do. I swear with every hour that ticked by, I lost an hour of my life. When I waddled off the plane (and I do mean waddle, my legs swell up like a fat infants’) and cart my 100 plus pounds of luggage, I realize time stopped when I left. I live two alternating lives. Here, on this side of the world, I am one person. A person that loosens her grip on control, lets things happen. No plan, no worries. But the other girl, the one that lives in the US time zone…She’s scared. She tries to hold on tightly to her ever-slipping grip on control. She panics, worries. Tries to amount to unrealistic expectations but fails.
As I lay awake here in my wooden bunk (top bed!) I grow excited to see what this foreign (but familiar) land may offer me. Its 4 am, is Starbucks open yet??
What gives me satisfaction? Not here. Not people who disappear like wisps of vapor. Perhaps this is the answer--in my solitude, people were spirits. They were a meaningful composite; but now they are ordinary. There's too many of them, coming from all directions. This is a sign of vying for control--thus is the world of man and work and school. Structure is my fear, routine is what I crave, and now I am a living paradox.
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