Nightswimming

Here I am. In Hokkaido. Sapporo. Kiyota ku. Hiraoka Koen Higashi. I'm home. I'm home. It's my home, and the only one I've got. Unfortunately, I don't live in my home. I don't really know where I live, but it doesn't matter right now, because I'm home.

I just spent about an hour laying in my dad's arms. Yes, I'm 18. No, I'm not ashamed that I still sit in my parents laps, and spend hours talking to them while lying on their bed.

I laid there feeling warm and happy, but you know what? I cried. Silent tears. Painful tears. For a moment, an hour, a mere speck in the grand scheme of my life, things were calm and known. Everybody hurts. I'm an everybody.

I'm homeless (or not really, but I've just moved one day before going to Thailand, so I can't really say I know what my new house is like. It's the third time I've moved this one senior year. I can't wait for stability). And time is moving too fast, considering I have Senior Compositions coming up, a room to pack, another room to unpack, homework to do, life to live, people to say goodbye to, and others to keep in contact with, while still others to spend time hanging out with, getting my eyes checked so that I can get new glasses, go to the orhtodontist so that he can do nothing to my retainer and tell me what a horrible job I've been doing taking care of my gums and the calcium that is built up on my teeth (not that anyone notices unless they've got their head in my mouth, which only happens at the ortho). Did I leave anything out? Oh yeah. College to get ready for, the States will be even worse, but I must be ready for that, too, and sometime in there, I have to find a life that I can call my own.

I guess all that is my life though, come to think of it. If I think of it that way, will I feel any better? Will it become easier? Probably not. It's a cruel irony.

For now, I'll sit here on my bed, listening to R.E.M.'s slow songs (R.E.M. is the most meaningful band in the world...), and look at my desktop, the picture on which reminds me a lot of how I feel. I don't want to think anymore. But wait... That leads to thought, doesn' t it?

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"

Life, ladies and gentlemen. Life.