It's official. I've been here for 1 week, 3 days.
I'm a little and a lot more alone than I've ever been.
After completing a successful 1st week of work, I found myself along the Ohio river Friday night, seated on the cement edge of the boardwalk. I let the little waves from some anonymous jet ski lightly brush against my sandals. I let the beautiful memory of the sunset on the rippling water stay somewhere deep. Let this be another reason.
I quickly pulled out my journal and wrote down sentences that sounded like: "I've made it back to the Ohio River. Away from home, not thinking about it. All its colors are too beautiful to describe and the river sways and ebbs with lines and circles of where things are. Life in water is what made a ripple.
A blue, a white, the way I feel most myself as if crystal, clear, and empty of headtrash. I can see myself looking on forever in the wake of the speedboat that made waves that lightly splash me. I move nowhere. The sound of it like small ocean waves. I am a part of the shore, a need to be part of something more. A desire to breathe. Every breath of mine is light and airy and I'm never more real than to be a part of such a river beauty. Keep all things quiet. The waves are getting bigger and bigger and I think I'm hungry.
I hope I don't eat too much again. I hope I'll stop worrying and just do the very thing that makes me worry. I hope my mind can save this moment into a safe place I go to when I'm stuck in buildings all day. Let me live richly, all needy of the beauty around me and appreciate the beauty already within my needy body.
My mind is my own paradise if I can memorize a place like this.
What that a gun or a firework?
Was that sweetness or fear?
It surprises me how badly I love being in myself right now.
Let's own a boat on the river and sail nowhere, because we've got nowhere to be."
I wrote words like that in a single breath by the Ohio River. And so I did, before I packed up all my stationary and haunted main street. Every shop stayed lit within, even if closed. I walked past so many couples and into a place called the "Moose Lodge" where people in jeans played pool and young women sat together smiling warmly at each other. I felt the evening closing in on me and left the "Moose Lodge" just as quickly. I walked back to my car with not even a grin on my face, just a sober look. A young-woman-freshly-displaced look. An empty look.
I wasn't empty though. Just... living. Perhaps. Perhaps?
The local vendors at the farmer's market yesterday all asked me after I introduced myself lightly, "What brings you here? All the way from Texas?" Their one-of-a-kind plant pots ("I don't take pictures, so none will ever be alike!"), one-of-a-kind five-dollar banana breads, or a hive of bees, stare back at me.
"Someone I really trust advised that I start my life here." In other times, I said, "A job. A really good one with great people."
I never pause at their questions. I've answered this same question so many times for co-workers, and in front of the bathroom mirror after I've cleaned my teeth. Somewhere in that mirror or in the hole in my head where something else once was, was a thought about why I was truly here. What made this so? Something I can't know well enough right now.
Because the answer doesn't feel real yet. Even though it's the truth.
The real answer is somewhere else. It existed once, in the hole in my head. I'm afraid of filling my head up again.
I'm afraid of living alone. I always look back after I've turned off a light in a room, so that I can catch something that is there if it wants to be. And for what? So that I can be afraid, and maybe go home.
Haha, silly girl.
I feel the truth of my life right now, which is, I have to stay at a place long enough to understand why I had to stay.
Like why did I stay in Houston for so long after graduation?
Because I needed it more than I knew it then. I needed to be at the nail salon. I needed to learn a deeper lesson about all sorts of humanity. I needed to become a better person, so that the person I am today can experience deeply all sorts of humanity here, in Ohio. And on weekends, in West Virginia.
I have to stay long enough in a place that the history in those months and years and on and on actually make sense. They can't not make sense, right? I can't live a life as silly as myself.
Some of the farmer's market vendors are happy to make my acquaintance. They're warm and cozy. I made a new friend briefly while buying cat earrings, even though I'm a dog person. She had to leave shortly after, but you should have seen the smile on my face.
From the market, I walked to the best coffee shop in town. Jeremiah's. As a Buddhist, the name of this place went way over my head. I bought a medium iced coffee and it turned out to be, basically and surprisingly, a Starbucks Venti but bigger. It was too sweet and made me all jittery while I handpicked and downloaded 200 photos/videos of my mother for her birthday video.
I really like her video this year. It's damn good!
Today, I haunted Walmart. The instant rush of how often I'd go here with my family came back to me. I could see, as if real, my father's back in any Walmart. A resilient hobble in his walk. The gout forever crippled his ankles but will never stop him from shopping.
Like me.
I'm sorry dear reader. I'm throwing a bunch of random moments and details and everything is flying like a plate.
It's the transitioning. I'm in transition. I'm moving much too fast.
I turned 24 in the same week that I just got back from Viet Nam, in the same week that I had to pack my bags and make the 20-hour drive to Ohio, in the same week that I set my things down in an apartment that I'd found on Craigslist, actually.
In the same week that I said a physical good-bye to someone I liked a lot.
I've cried in my Subaru a couple of times now. Leaving Houston, leaving Cleveland, coming back to Marietta. All roads lead to Marietta.
You know, it's the shock of transitioning. I'm in transition, after all. I'm moving much too fast.
So give me a break, Ngoc.
Ah, and give me a head pat too, for putting out the trash tonight. Give me a head pat too for finding a very pretty rug for my reading room. A reading rug.
Give me a head pat for making tasty honey-glazed salmon while sad.
And give me a head pat for remembering in a moment of delirium, that I AM liked.
And a big, big shout out to my mother, who's always called me when I needed it most.
I found myself on the steps of my porch earlier this evening, looking up at the sky and the birds and repeating the sentence, "I am not alone. I am not alone" over and over in my head like a haunted Asian woman.
And that's when my mumsies video called me, posing in a cute white puffer jacket and wondering what my opinion was on it.
Of course, you're beautiful, Mom. And I felt so much better. Gah. Gosh. Eeeeep.
So I'm not alone, even if I'm physically alone.
And even that's not true. I'm not physically alone. I'm now acquainted with new people who recognize that I'm not Japanese, but actually Vietnamese.
"I have Southeast Asian calves, look at them! They're a key differentiator!" I would yell in my head.
But honestly, I take a lot of humor in it. In my legs, and in my life right now.
It's tough, heh, to be an independent woman.
Is. Tough.
I'll figure out soon, hopefully, what the hole in my head is all about. :)
For now, your girl is a silly lady. Silly enough that I hope my silliness makes you feel better about your silliness-es.
Sending a hug to you, dear reader. I like you.
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