21 years has gone so fast

(long and boring stories I wrote this afternoon... didn't like it...)

Let me start over again…

It’s 1am, a perfect time for me to express my weirdness.

I like mid-night, especially its darkness which makes me extremely sensitive. Light and color cheats my eyes. In the daytime, they blur my vision and distract my focus on observing the things around me. When they disappear, I start to see things clearer and have a better sense of the real “me”. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I don't like black cats. They hide in the dark corners and look at me with their sharp and bright eyes. I always feel they can see through me.

I took a nice walk with my close someone around the area we live in the evening today. He asked me to tell him a long story about a period in my life that’s interesting. But, my life has been the same everyday since I was 6. I wake up in the morning, clean myself up and run to the school. I take endless tests and homework. I come home, crush on my bed and wait for another “yesterday”. I don’t know why I’ve always chosen the hard way to live my life. I want to step out of my hometown to explore things my friends will never see. I want to be a straight A student. I want to challenge the toughest major in my school. And now I have all these things I wanted. Am I happy with it? I don’t know…

Sometimes, I wonder… If I’ve never moved out of Beijing, who would I be right now? Probably like my other old friends there, fighting with the final year in college and trying to compete with millions of other newly graduated students to get a job. Me and my old friends would get together sometimes over the weekend and have a bowl of noodle which costs $0.25. And we would point at a foreigner on the street and say “Oh! Look at that Lao Wai”. I would still live with my parents, never know how to cook or fix the cracking tiles on the floor. It would be a much easier and simpler live. But, is that what I want? I don’t think so…

Instead, I stretched my arms to reach over other places in the world to see what else I can use to light up the candle of my life. I moved to Malaysia, then the United States.
Then I experienced…
-The first time I was horrified to notice I don’t have any friends with me anymore. I started to freak out because I don’t know how to make new friends in the international school where people look all different and speak different languages.
-The first time I had to plan for my future, thinking about what kind of class I need to take and which university’s what major do I want to apply for. My parents couldn’t help me because none of them has gone through a similar step. I was all on my own.
-The first time I understood what an 8 years of separation could do to a marriage. It means it’ll take even longer for the couple to get use to each other again. What are left are scares in each other’s heart that’ll never heal.
-The first time I got flowers from the principle on the stage after the semester-end music performance. I played piano for jazz band, choir and singers that night. I was on the stage through the entire show. I became popular in the school after the show. Music helped me to meet lots of friends too.
-The first time I had to leave my family and unfold a whole new page of my life that has all sort of unknown surprises waiting for on there. I became a college student in USA. I saw all kinds of people and things in the school, parties, drugs and alcohol… Things were overwhelming for me. Suddenly I felt so lonely. I had no friends and I needed to start from the beginning again. I’ve had this experience once, and I definitely hated to let it happen twice. But I have no choice.
-The first time I had to stay up the whole night in order to finish my architectural project. It felt like dying. The moment when I finished my presentation and got all the positive feedbacks, I almost fainted in the studio. But I felt happy.
-The first time I decided to fall in love and start a real and happy relationship. I chose the wrong person. My world fell apart and I was hurt so badly. I thought I would never be able to stand up and love again. But God always love me much more than I thought. I met my close someone last winter and slowly, he melted my frozen heart. The warm spring came back to my world again.
-The first time I moved into an empty apartment alone for a week. With all the boxes and junks pilling up in the living room, I sat on the floor and started to cry for no clear reason. 5am, I called my parents. I told them I was just having jetlag and got bored so I made the call. I wanted to tell them I was so lonely and upset. I wanted to tell them I really miss them. But I got to be strong because I didn’t want them to worry about me.

21 years has gone so fast. I’ve grown to a young woman with all kinds of weird thoughts about future from that little girl who looks like a doll. I don’t know what I’ll be when I’m 31, 41… But I know whatever step I take, I work hard for my goal and never regret.