If only I knew

(December 2007)

So I am sitting here, at my work station, at HSBC, in Metropolitan, on Dong Khoi street. Search for it on Google, you’ll see how luxurious it is to see how safe and luxurious things I have experienced. That is not a big thing, I’m used to these things, or at least I assure myself so. Like spending a day on 23^rd floor of Sheraton, I had an acquainted feeling though I hadn’t been there before.

But I am going to leave this place; I have known that from the beginning. I have lived here, in Sai Gon for 6 months. For several times I have told myself that I’m not sure if I want to live here. Hanoi is still something in me. I can get along with people, with places as I have been a wanderer.

I’m lost. In this place I have been lost, these days. I’m not sure, again, if this feeling has come to me when I was in Amsterdam, when I was in Germany, in Austria, in Maryland, in New York, in Oklahoma. I think I had none. I am again going. Life is said to be a journey and that fact is true for me. I enjoy every thing on every trip or at least I have learnt so. Yet now, I am here, unsettled. What would you say about a girl, only 22 and want to settle? You would say that she has to enjoy life, to gain experiences, and those blah blah things, wouldn’t you? I don’t know. I have told myself, today that I don’t want experiences though I remember how I liked me being experienced, telling people places I have been, things I have done.

I can’t figure out myself, my wishes for the near future. How I want those fortune-tellers to say that I will be single, that I will spend time traveling alone, being alone, a nomad, a wanderer. Yes, I would be so, if my Father is still with my Mother. I don’t know how an experienced person means. If it means being in several places, doing the meaning work? What is the meaning work? I am now coming back to 15, 16 when teenagers what the meaning of life is. For me, it is just that you have a happy family. I know that I can not leave out my career, but from the inside, family, perhaps, yes, just perhaps, is the most important thing to me. Thus, I’m not lost because of the feeling of unsettled. I don’t like ‘feelings’. It reminds me of him, of the damn things that I have gone through. Am I starting again? I don’t like invisible things. But yet, what I am going to gain, in the near or even long future is just those invisibles. I can’t use the F word to the person that once made me think about settling, about working, about having a family. If only I could!

To people, I still see the life ‘pink’. I still love life. Yes, I do. But today, I see the solution for me to kill the sadness inside is killing myself. Yes, only suicide can work. Fortunately, I still want to live, to see “what a wonderful world”.

I am a coward. I don’t live life to the fullest as I don’t want to love a particular person. I don’t want love. Love for me is hurt. I don’t like myself crying, I’m afraid of people seeing me crying. He saw it. But he is no longer with me. And so here I am, with other people, an insensitive creature.

I am having the feeling of regret of HSBC. Yes, coz when I am here, am just a small thing, but still a thing. I can go nowhere to get rid of the negative in me. I love people, in front of those I am different, I show my happy side but I am still real, real with me, real with others. The sadness, the happiness comes to me wherever I go. Did I tell myself that life is more precious and more beautiful with the ups and downs?

I am going. I know the time I will come back, but not very sure. I have never before had a need of being in Vietnam like this. Don’t I belong to this place? Or is it me that belongs to no one and no where?

If only I knew that I would be alone, forever.