old friends

And then, suddenly one day I realize how far I have been away from my friends. Just one day I heard that she's been engaged and is going to get married soon, the one who appears to me to have no change, and all her life is like a lake, with no big waves. How far I had been aware myself that some of my friends are no longer friends, after high school years till now, 7 years. Sooner or later, it would be 10 years, with no difference. But in 3 years, people may have changed very much, and love and marriage sometimes only needs a few months to make it happen. Didn't I realize that I have been away from my friends, sharing nothing, hearing nothing from them while managing and living my own life? When I was younger, a few years ago, I was glad to be in the open world, to make more friends and to know more people. Now, suddenly what matters is the closed friends that I had. The ones whose houses I dropped by almost every day to go to school together, whose I ate breakfast at her home, whose house I had to stay over because of the floods, whose I know their families, parents, grandparents, cousins,...

I blamed them for not keeping me posted with their lives. They probably don't know my life either, and the ones whom I have concern about. Now, I seem like the person who doesn't have that much growth and change, watching my friends and their lives going by, disconnected.

Am I no longer the person they can share their lives with. Standing in Herengracht, I wonder if we are still the same, because they no longer share or know my life. Distance, with its unawareness divides people apart, or just they themselves go further away from each other. I questioned my life being here; yet now and here, it is my life, the life that I am aware of my happiness when I'm alone, or when I have someone to hang around with. Here and there, it is perhaps my life and different lives that are different. Somes are destined to be there, some are born to go, detached or connected, life keeps going.

There is no time for unoptimized thought.

Why think? It's better reading Winnie the Pooh and go!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

periods

My mom was waiving her hands looking at us from the custom.

If only there's no habit formed...
If only there's no change ever happened...

Today, it occurs to me how precious the 'ordinary' moments are. I only need those, to have no sadness, inside...
20, 25 years are long periods, for a baby to grow up, and for a 20s something to get matured. But they can be short, when you just live, need nothing, except a lake without waves.

If only it could be rational. Yes, life is with target, to be happy.

in the middle of somewhere

I've been sometimes thinking about chi Lan (Khoai's mother) or chi Linh, who is two years older than me and was happily married two years ago, and my girlfriends who have got married, and those who are single. A few among the latter are successful, to people's perception. To me, I'd prefer those who have a happy family. Of course, it's told that as a modern and independent girls/ women, your happiness shouldn't depend on a guy. It's true. But when it comes to family, it's you who decide the happiness of the family, or at least, it's you to choose the right one to marry. Words are easier than actions, though. To a lot of girls, I just can find the reason of them being lucky not to have the wrong one(s). It seems to me, when I am getting older, that you cannot choose your fate. Like, before you were born, there were fates on the sky and God just plugged you in that life. I have turned Asian-minded after years of living on my own abroad. Isn't it strange?

I'm a difficult person, and stubborn even though sometimes I'm nice and adaptive. I am so when I'm aware of myself. Once in a while, I tell myself that I am lucky, to have my boyfriend with me. Because, he is a happy person, and he doesn't think much, like me. My life seems to turn to what I had imagined: a normal life. I thought it would be happy. In fact, I still see it so. A 'normal' life of a girl, to my perception is not having too much in a career, that you don't work for a bank or any financial institutions all days that make you forget about what you can do except work. A normal life contains love and attachment to other person(s). I have a job in a nice company, in the centre of Amsterdam, a start-up company that you find things to do yourself in an industry that has been changing so much and it will still be, in more than 5 years. I, myself like people and I like my colleague. I just don't know where the feeling of belonging doesn't exist in me. I don't belong to the industry, or don't I belong to the young society in the Netherlands? I don't think the latter, but the former. Yet, I have never been working for a bank in the Netherlands although I was going to. If I had worked there, probably, some day I would find out I need to be outside. I am not really a type of an office worker. Yet again, to be really something or nothing is better than in the middle, where I am now, in a casual environment but still, it's office, numbers which don't require a lot of creativity or sympathy and love for people.

I want to go home, sometimes, very much. My home is where my mother and my younger brother live, and where I used to go to the beach with my family two or three times per week in the summer. My home is where I can have food coming from the sea, where I can breath the sea into my chest. Yet, when I've turned more grown-up, it's difficult to do so. I cannot just leave what I have here (in the Netherlands) and what I have some responsibility on (my work and to some extent, my boyfriend). There's one thing I know, my boyfriend is more than a 'boyfriend'. That our lives are to be met, not for short-term. I have a girlfriend. She's purely girl and she enjoys writing, mostly about girls and love. I don't, even though I used to. Relationship can be tiring, especially when you're in love, and distant. Yet, being in love and to love a person is different. You won't leave a person unless that person turns different to you. I don't say 'unless that person changes' since everyone changes and that is necessary.

What I meant with 'my life seems to turn normal' is that I will travel, have a family, and to go to work still, taken into account that the world will still be fine in years to come, without so many natural disasters or crimes. On an on, I still have to learn to content with myself while still keep some space for my own development, the reason why I don't come back to my hometown or to Vietnam at the moment. (Where time is mostly spent on social networking and other things that you can't control, like traffic trams). I will, probably be an ordinary woman and if that's true, I will work with people and for people after some efforts.