Twilight, Typhoon, WFH
I have been thinking lately that it is probably easier to feel lovable when someone loves you. It is harder when you are alone in a new city in a new country, twelve hours ahead of anyone who cares about you. It is lonely here. I have been feeling bad and I have no one to talk to: I fear the people who surround me would make me feel ashamed for the things I feel, or offer unhelpful solutions. I do not feel like anyone understands.
I haven’t felt this way, maybe ever. I keep trying to picture how things felt almost five years ago, when I was so depressed, recovering from a year of gaslighting and a sense of emptiness so profound that I used to wander up and down the street just to remember that I was part of something. Even during those times I had people around me, some form of support. I used to describe those times as feeling “marooned, “ because it felt like I was shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean with no one around. (On that note, do not watch the film The Blue Lagoon. It is not a romantic Swiss Family Robinson and is, in fact, racist.) I no longer feel marooned. I feel landlocked in this vast country. Instead of floating in water, I feel I am rooted into massive amounts of earth, in a country with almost 1.5 billion people, all roaming about on the same terrain. I am attuned to the physical distance of America in a way I didn’t think I would be. I wonder if this is compounded by the emotional distance: maybe Fishtown wouldn’t feel like a theoretical place if my friends in Philadelphia were not so distant.
Clearly I have given up on making this blog the kind of upbeat travel blog one would expect of a 24-year-old who quit her job to move across the world because she was afraid she’d die before getting to live in China. Instead, I have chosen to write here instead of calling my mom or emailing my therapist or making up with my best friend. It is simpler to commiserate with myself on a platform no one reads than to try to tell anyone what I am feeling. This blog cannot say anything back. It does not force me to talk about the things that are painful. Instead I can sit at the dining room table where everything happens and write whatever the hell I want.
On the subject of being lovable, etc., I have become obsessed with Twilight. I rebelled against it so strongly during the Twilight period of popular culture, mostly because my childhood best friend became obsessed with them and dumped me in a complicated, adolescent identity crisis. Plus, my mother (forever a professor of English literature) gave me her full analysis of the books as they relate to purity culture, which has of course never left me. I saw the movies during my stay in Dallas on the way here and then accidentally ended up in a Facebook group called “Twilight Sewerposting.” It is called that because it is an entire tier lower than Twilight Shitposting. It is really very bad and I LOVE it. I have been watching Twilight meme videos and starting to rewatch all of the movies and it has given me some sort of comfort. I can’t pinpoint exactly how.
We have been working from home for the past two days because of a typhoon warning in the city. This has given me ample time to complete nothing, relive my trauma, and watch Twilight. We go back tomorrow.
