A Stroll
September 6th, 2024
Today I strolled down the streets of downtown at night. In my earphones I played Jannabi. It range very mellow. So much so that I got lost in it a bit, and when I awoke I saw myself at the street.
On Friday nights, everyone is out. I see people living their lives and talking to one another. Couples stroll down. I hear the laughter of a Chinese couple, and the intense conversation of another.
Muted glances, one that only lovers could ever share. Workers at the taqueria in uniform, dutifully playing their part as waiters and cooks. I look at them through a window. The moon, half-crescent tonight, was dim.
A family, a young couple with a child in cart, picking up their baby and setting him down. They're laughing in joy. Friday.
And, it shakes me to my core, when I suddenly realize that I'm alone in all this. Everyone has someone to spend time with.
I moved across the country only to find nobody.
The Iron Village
My mother's father hails from a village in Vietnam. It's a little ways from Saigon, and I got a chance to visit there once in my life. I met my distant relatives there.
It's a humble place with flower patches, and a place that never experiences the cold. Blistering heat all year round, and lush greenery is the only color anyone could ever know if they lived there their whole lives.
The people there are humble and kind. They live with little means, but little means a lot.
I just thought of them when I was eating in a Vietnamese restaurant alone. The TV was playing footage of Vietnamese street vendors, squatting on the ground with their wares displayed right on the ground. My eyes watered a little, because that sort of humility reminded me. It reminded me of when my mother used to descale her fish right on the ground. It reminded me of home.
Sometimes I imagine that there was a timeline where my mother and father stayed in Vietnam and met there. And they had me in the iron village, and I grew up in that poor village with little means. Sometimes I imagine that that's all I knew to life, and the little that I knew I actually enjoyed.
I stare out today from my apartment tower---I can see the lights and mountain views. Thousands of buildings and rich folks here. Everyone here is nice, and the goods are plentiful. My distant relatives from the iron village would have loved to see this.
But I'm alone. I'm miserable here.
Why I'm Alone
The answer is simple: go meet people. Stop moping around.
I do. I meet a lot of people. But I feel awful with other people. When I spend time with others, I want to shoot myself in the goddamn head sometimes because of what I say and do. Why do I do these things? I don't know. It's always in hindsight do I realize how awful and awkward I am.
When I'm alone I'm miserable. When I'm in other people's company I'm even more miserable and want to walk in front of a train. There just is not stopping the misery.
It's not that I don't like people. It's that I don't like myself when I'm around other people. I like being alone more than I like being with people, but being alone sucks too.
The solution is to stop caring what other people think. And to be honest, I don't think I care much for what other people think. I care what I think. And I think I suck. That's what matters anyway.
Is the solution to stop caring about what I think? Maybe.
Can you control your thoughts? Can you control your feelings? I guess not.
I don't like being miserable around bright people, because it drags them down to misery. It hurts me to see that. But it also hurts to be alone and miserable.
I tried being fake and happy. It doesn't work. People see right through it. You're not sincere and people can see through that so fast. It's even worse.
I think the only solution at this point is to just be comfortable being miserable. Some people's brains are just wired like that I guess, mine included.
Stop Giving an Actual Fuck
Done. I think I'm just gonna be like a monkey in the wild. Just do what I want.