Midnight walks in Xiang'an campus

Midnight walks in Xiang'an campus - step by step, heartbeat by heartbeat, and dust by dust, I accumulated tiny specks of hope, accommodating the vision I had in anticipation to come back home.

I thought the emptiness that haunted me formed through homesickness. I always looked for the moon and thought if the same dim moonlight was gracefully shining on my home. I thought the emptiness would be filled once I got back home. I replayed the playlist I curated out of homesickness, out of desperation, out of loneliness. I think even the songs were tired of me replaying them.

The winds in the winter nights blew across my skin, cold and harsh. I could feel my flesh tingling and shivering, and my fingers were as numb as my emotions were. It was the kind of cold that wouldn't go away even after you wrapped yourself in jackets, coats and blankets. The urge to continue walking grew stronger as it could freeze my feelings and thoughts so I won't have to face them.

Those midnight walks were therapeutic for me, as the moon followed me wherever I go, searching for the faint twinkle of the stars.  Occasionally, I cross paths with some people on the streets. Some were running for fitness probably, some were just a couple of friends joking about each other. There was always the guard who sits alone in the booth near the roundabout, who looks at every person who walked pass. I always wondered what were their stories, what kept them up so late at night, if they liked the silence and quietness of the campus at this hour as well...

Maybe if I take more midnight walks, those confusing feelings or thoughts would slowly get lost in the paths I took. Maybe, as I trace the map with my footsteps across the lanes, it would sketch out a blur image of what my future holds. Then, perhaps I could comprehend the decision-making and find my way out. Perhaps I would be able to draw a conclusion and find the element to fill the emptiness here.

***

Then I boarded the flight which was supposed to send me home.

I didn't arrive home. I didn't step into the comfort or familiarity.

I came back to disappointments, tragedies, and unfamiliarity.

So I kept walking, and walking in the midnight, searching for the piece of home, for the speck of familiarity, for the bit of comfort again. Maybe if I took more midnight walks, I could trace the steps back to home, or even find the pieces of those feelings and thoughts I left in the dark, lonely and cold streets.

I walked again and again, the same moonlight now shines over my empty hands as I stare into the vast empty darkness. I didn't find any way back, nor any way out; I didn't find any of the feelings and thoughts I forced to forget around a year ago. I felt more stuck, lost and empty than I have ever been.

You don't need the winter winds to blow at night to make you numb or shiver. You don't have to walk the dark and empty streets alone to feel lonely.

So here I am still searching and searching, in the vast unknown, in the eyes of people as they lit up being ignited from talking about what keeps them burning, in little mysterious pauses they place into conversations, in my endless attempts to feel again.

The things that were once my motivation became my burden, the things that made me tick became meaningless. An infinitesimal black hole appeared out of nowhere and drained all I had and all I ever am.

I didn't understand how or why it happened. The brightness felt more and more strange, unfamiliar and uncomfortable for me, and through that I have grown more and more familiar and comfortable with the darkness. As if I didn't felt alive through the breathing, but through the suffocating. My body was tired out of the day, but my soul kept running and running, escaping the tunnel of emptiness towards the end in finding closure. My eyes wouldn't close as they hunt down for every single feelings or thoughts to feed my heart that I starved, they hunted down every flashback, every memory, and every corner of the complicated network of neurons. I drained all my energy scrolling mindlessly, and I fall asleep in dissatisfaction as I failed to find any glimpse of closure and settlement that I was aching for.

Someone tried to call for help from deep within, but no one heard it. Someone was drowning and gasping for life from the deep, but no one saw anything from the surface. Someone was profusely bleeding, heavily wounded and torn apart, desperate to feel another heartbeat, to take one more breath, but no one could notice it happening deep down inside. Just like that, layer by layer of death continued to build up on top of each other, burying that someone deeper, pushing that someone into greater depths, as if it was trying to make Marianas Trench the second deepest part of the oceans.

You don't need any weapons to murder, repression, neglect and abandonment works much better.

I thought ignoring what I felt would make it go away, I could press a pillow to suffocate the feelings and let it temporarily rest, I thought I could come back to face and process them when I am ready. I was wrong. It was suffocating for too long and it died. You thought you could hold your breath temporarily and push the timing to its edge, but that temporary was too long that it became permanent. The breathing didn't stop for a while, it stopped forever.

Just like that I realize that I murdered myself. I extinguished the flickering flame of the birthday candles by a single breath, and I died just like those flames, returning to the darkness that I was familiar with. Sleepless nights after sleepless nights, pushing it further deep down, building death piece by piece.

It wasn't the circumstances that shaped the way we are, but the way we are have shaped our circumstances. So, laugh when you still can, cry when you want to, say what you want to say if keeping it inside keeps you up at night, do what you want to as long as it won't hurt another being, even if you can't do it because you didn't have enough, go gather the resources and the things and the courage to do it, if you found something that keeps you alive, hold on tight to it and never let it go..... never let your true self go. Positivity and negativity are both valid and darkness should get the same recognition as the light. Why focus on solely positivity, when we can learn from the negativity as well. After all, we can't truly appreciate and understand the light when we have never experienced darkness or seen any shadows. We don't light up the birthday candles and let them burn to their end, we make birthday wishes, igniting hope and vision, hold on to it, then blow away the flame, so that we are ready to face the darkness that comes after.

Sometimes, the shadows teach us more about light than light itself. Most adults would encourage us to abandon the black and find the white, but they never told us that the world was made up of grey in infinite shades. We don't have to see in the same exact shade of grey to understand each other, we just have to understand that we see in different shades of grey. So what, if the world appears a little darker for person A, and the world appears a little brighter for person B? They both live in the same spectrum, same axis. Love doesn't come from having the same shade of grey, but the acceptance and validation of each other's shades of grey. It isn't a crime for any of us to see the world in different patterns, but it can be disastrous for one to start forcing the other to live in the same shade of grey as he/she is. It was never about being wrong or being right, it was never two sides, it was always.... a combination of both, still, a point on a spectrum, it really depends on how you see it and where you see it from, maybe even on which shade you see it in...

The society have taught us to view the world in opposites. It made you and I opposites, we and them opposites, and these opposites have created and widen a gap which divides everyone. If we abandon the opposites and start viewing everyone of us as points on a same spectrum, then there will not be any gaps or holes.

Maybe I'm just 20 years old, barely even experienced much, only spun with the earth around the sun for twenty times, but I felt like I have lived enough, or should I say, died enough. I died every night and live again when I wake up the next morning. I murder myself to sleep again so that I could bury that layer of unsettled-ness and as I open my eyes the next morning, I build a layer of me to face the new "life" I woke up into. Maybe, just maybe when I truly truly understand what life is, that's when the time death comes for me. After all, I think that we can never appreciate life if it wasn't because what death can be.

I have no idea how my mind can wander so far off into different dimensions when I only wanted to distract myself away from the work I should be doing. I dug deep into myself in search of answer and but found nothing inside.

So, I walked out again in the middle of the night, searching for closure, hunting for revelations, thirsty for warmth, hungry for understanding. But I found nothing, so I let the darkness decorated with specks of disappointment guide my steps back to my bed and it made my drained, breathless body fall asleep.

So if you asked why, why can't I sleep? Why do I always wilder into the night? Why do I always looked so exhausted in the day? To be honest, I never knew why. I only know that I'm doing all these but I don't know what I'm actually doing or why I did these. The failure to find a closure defeats me emotionally, and its aftermath haunts me. The unsettled-ness bothers me and drains me of all I am. I have no idea what's wrong with me, or what did I do wrong. Engulfed by the feeling of being lost, I surrendered into the darkness and bid the fading glimpse of light farewell. Tell her my last words were a whisper of "Goodnight" spoken in the faint moonlight.

-bx.