it’s just too much: too many emotions to carry, too much pain, too much suffering, day after day, time after time. there were days when even breathing felt difficult.
my interest in the world, my curiosity about it, has slowly worn away. not all at once, but gradually, like water leaking from a pipe – a little here, a little there, almost too little to notice until one day, you realize there’s hardly anything left. and by then, perhaps, it’s already too late. till this point, you have to wake up, somehow, start putting yourself back together, find ways to replenish whatever energy you have left, to fill up that empty water tank, while learning how to live with the leaks because the leaks don’t simply disappear.
I have this strange belief that as long as I don’t make certain things real, they continue to exist somewhere. people I’ve lost are still alive, going about their ordinary lives, as they always did. there is no death, no suffering. it’s just that I can no longer reach them or see them or speak to them, they are somewhere beyond my reach, but still there.
perhaps it’s easier to believe that than to accept their absence.
there doesn’t seem to be much love left in this world for me. I remember The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the book I was reading last year. having finished it, I find there isn’t much left to feel except loneliness. or perhaps solitude. what, after all, is the difference between the two? are they merely different words for the same condition, or do they describe entirely different states of mind, different ways of existing in the world?
I live in solitude, here in the middle of Saigon. loneliness? sometimes.
it’s rather like living through another year of Covid, except this time you’re the only one infected, the only one still in quarantine while outside, life has resumed. people meet, talk, fall in love, go out for dinner, make plans. they carry on with their lives, while you remain behind, watching the world through a window that no one else seems to notice.
I’ve tried to blend in. I’ve tried to find my place among people. but it simply doesn’t fit. I don’t belong here, and perhaps these are not my people either. for as long as I can remember, my great lifelong quest has been to find somewhere I belong: a place, a circle of people, a little gang I could call my own. nothing particularly extraordinary just somewhere I could exist without having to make an effort to belong. perhaps I had that once. perhaps there was a time when I was surrounded by people who felt like home but not anymore.
do we all die alone, in the end? my father died in the same place where, I believe, he was born. he died among his own people, surrounded by those he loved and cared for. there is something comforting in that thought, though I cannot quite explain why. perhaps because, at the very end, he was still somewhere he belonged.
I often wonder how he is doing now. has he simply ceased to exist? or, as Buddhism teaches, has he already been reborn into another life, somewhere entirely unknown to me? is he happy there? does he remember anything of this life, the people he knew, the places he lived, the ordinary days that once made up his existence?
does he remember me?
does he ever miss me?
because I miss him. very much.