In a hotel lobby, waiting to get coffee, she doesn’t have time for disingenous interactions. She meets my half-hearted, “We should catch up!” with the insincere, American, “…Yeah.”
To be fair, we are at the end of a 10-month long mile. I have the guilt of my mistakes slithering down my back. My hair is falling out at an impressive rate and I am 10 pounds lighter. Mentally, I’ve been better.
In the next three weeks, I will take a vow of silence. I do not talk to anyone unless I need to. I post photos on Instagram to prove I am alive. They are the kinds of photos that say “I am here! Doing better than ever! From wherever I am!” And to be fair, that’s not a lie. I’m healing, in silence, alone. My friends are jealous. But if they only knew.
The truth is my mind is running in circles. Could have done this better or never said that. Learning to forgive myself. What I did. Who I am. Acting out because I was terrified of losing myself. For making mistakes. For failing. For not knowing to not turn my back on a Buddha statue when walking out of a shrine. For forgetting a cardigan to cover my shoulders. Not knowing how to read a room. For not knowing how stubbornly western I was being. For yelling at someone for ghosting me. For being too blunt. Too Northeastern. Too critical. For being myself.
I purge myself of these reoccuring thoughts by walking miles and miles in cities I’ve always dreamed of seeing and exploring. Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore. I sit in cafes and watch people as they live and commute to work and fall in love and just simply be. I try and reconcile how immensely beautiful it is – my life here and my life there and their lives here and then there. It’s all so seemingly incomprehesible.
And then, in a fishing town close to Hiroshima, where the Otari Gate is, I decide to hike up a mountain. I climb without knowing where I am going, sprinting higher and higher in a hope to evade the rising dusk at the summit.. I am trying to escape darkness, but also trying to escape my past self. My breathing deepens as I pass by families and tourists descending. Sweat drips down as I continue in pursuit of the peak. And then, when I think I can go no further, I reach the peak.
I take in a deep breath.
The sea surrounds me. To my right are tourists — small dots snapping photos to remember this moment forever. The Otari Gate. The setting sun. To my left, the open sea, surrounded by trees. I stare at the colors of the changing leaves and watch how the ocean laps at the rocks below.
The autumn I barely received. I’m going through an autumn too. Changing. It’s not everything and everything is not okay. But that’s okay too. I take another deep breath and close my eyes.
“The past is gone. It’s going to be alright.”
Greatfull 