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.