let it all hang out.

I’m going to try and give myself the freedom to suck at conveying my feelings through writing. Maybe I’ll blog more with this new proclaimed freedom, as often I feel like I have to sum up this experience in some sort of eloquent epiphany and I just can’t have that weight on my shoulders if I ever really want to write.

I have and always will be someone who needs to be medicated. Depression. I was told, many times that I shouldn’t go off medication during this transition but one errand was prioritized over another and I ended up not setting myself up for meds and so I guess I went off of them. It’s not a pretty thing, combined with the actual reality of the situation. To say the least, the first six months here were bleak as fuck.

 Teaching is different here. I know, no fucking shit, Sherlock, but worlds different from what I am used to. Say what people will about the education system in the U.S.- it is EONS ahead of what I am experiencing here. And, no, I don’t think it’s just my school, I think international schools filled with expats from all over the world just haven’t figured it out yet.

Having a pseudo long distance relationship is dumb. Let it go.

Friends. To say that this experience has put friendship into perspective to me is not doing it justice. My words never will. What I do know is that people treat you different when you are leaving a place, and people treat you even more differently when you have left. You realize some friendships were out of convenience of location. You realize some people will go all “single white female” on you. You realize, at the end of the day, you better know how to be alone as much as you need to know how to choose the right people to share your life with.

Selfishness. People have described my decision to move abroad solo as many things. One of the clear ideas that comes out of this is that people who are able to take hold of their life with their own two hands are selfish. It’s true. That’s about all the people who do this thing have in common. We decided to do something crazy for the sake of feeling like we have control over something. Read: it’s tougher to find common ground with people in your “situation” than it might seem.

The Chinese. Oh, the Chinese. Tonight my good friend Beth said “sometimes this place does grow on me,” and it perfectly summed up living in China. It’s fucking hard. If you say it isn’t, you are not being honest and/or you don’t know how to critically think about the pros and cons of a place. But, with all the hacking of loogies (sp?), the talking {yelling}, the dirtiness, the pushing and shoving, sometimes there is a light. Because, yes, you see yourself so incredibly differently because you are in environment that doesn’t cater to you one bit. Some might call it selfish, some might call it pretentious, but I’m just happy to have taken the leap to give myself that kind of perspective.