Patterns

It's a very ironic thing to contemplate the utter excesses of this country, especially after a night of soju and noribangs and watching the sun come up on some steps in a bar-district where people continue to stumble around well into working hours. Surrounded by garbage-filled streets and puddles of vomit, and laughing about my earlier rendition of "Oops, I did it again," while I scratched out star-shaped patterns in my denim-clad knees, I felt extremely happy, like I'd finally found people and a life I could tolerate, if not grow to enjoy.

Those in the know might mistake my tendency towards excess as a bad thing, an addiction, and in a way, it is, as my inclinations to absorb completely and yet, be broken down so entirely—erosion on fast-forward—assume so many different forms, pervade so many aspects of my life, and have the ability to thrill me or shut me down absolutely. The odd part is, the differences in what sparks feeling one way or another, are practically minute, if at all decipherable.

I've always believed in the dual nature of individuals, who contribute to a collective that is even more dual, if not outright deranged. However, despite my recent desire to be sociable and to be accepted and entertaining, I say goodnight and end most nights feeling distant, an enigmatic variable unsure of who the hell that person leaving the bar really was and why she was talking so much and so fast, like there'd never be another chance to find a friend who'll listen and laugh and enjoy her company. With people, I feel my energy being consumed by my laughter and my stories and my many opinions. But later, alone at home, when the last cigarette's been smoked and it's no longer any fun, and all I've got is dirty laundry and dishes, I feel so alone and I crawl into bed and try to dream, falling into layered stories--which will maybe never be written down—that pattern and spin themselves, spider-like, around my memories and desires so beautifully and so terrifyingly so, that they become lost forever in my catapulting, see-saw mind, an unfortunate victim of duality and the excesses of my body and my thoughts.

Being with friends is rather new for me. I'm used to feeling so abandoned, and here, on the other side of the world, I find myself growing very much attached to certain characters. I'll miss them terribly when they leave or when I do.

I made it home at 8:00 Wednesday morning, and by myself for the first time in about twenty hours, I felt extremely isolated, like I was the last flower in an empty field and entirely without protection from the elements. Swaying back and forth with the wind, or rather, my air-conditioning, this run-down little Lily fell into a very deep sleep until late in the afternoon when there was a rooftop barbeque to go to, and more drinks to be drunk in commemoration of the national holiday as well as a day's respite from sticky little monster-children who think their shrieks and interruptions will intimidate me into letting them play games or sleep through my classes.

Wednesday afternoon was not the best day to be outside. The sky was a smoggy shade of white and the wind was blowing sparks from the fire dangerously close to flowing skirts and loose hair. It worked out in the end, though for at least half an hour, we wondered whether there'd be a monsoon. Later, we moved the party to an apartment where British comedy, music and literature were discussed with great relish. I love that people here get my references, as obscure as they have a tendency to be. It became yet another all-nighter, where no sleep was had, but being surrounded by people is practically a sociological experience--and one that I am happy to have--for me.

However, I'm mildly afraid that the extreme happiness I feel when I'm out sets me up for a really depressing low; like the higher one gets, the harder and more traumatic the fall will be. It's like when I was really young and would become nearly maniacal after supper, an odd tendency of mine that either had me shrieking and laughing in hysterical, choking staccato gasps, or feeling overwhelmingly head-splittingly bad. I cannot explain this nearly violent 'reaction' to food, but considering it now, as I sometimes do, I view it as feedback (pun definitely intended), hostile as it usually was, to my lifelong opposition to being controlled, be it by good-"yes-daddy"- behaviour, or by silently being guilt-tripped into finishing my plate of food ("because there are starving children in India"), all the while secretly imagining with no small degree of bitterness how much happier I'd be if there were less of me. And, until my extreme behaviour was finally instigated into an angry frenzy by siblings, which was of course only to be reprimanded by annoyed and screaming parents, I'd be like this, though honestly, most of my evenings culminated with a general sense of injustice as I sobbed into my pillows.

Thursday morning, at home and nursing a very bad hangover, not looking at all forward to my day at work, I sat at my window and had I had the energy or fluid enough in my system, perhaps I would have shed a few tears if that sort of thing was less of a challenge to me as it is. By myself, in the light of day, without the neon lights vibrantly painting the city electric, I realized I had no distractions to rely on, that until work started, I'd be stuck with the worse companion a girl can have, an insulting, compulsive, lecturing excuse for a brain, or a mind, rather, my invisible, un-trappable, habit-former, problem-maker, that so often tempts me so close to the figurative ledge and forces me to look at the vertigo-inducing aspects of my life that come up, so to speak, and bring me so down.

Work was terrible on Thursday. Head spinning, I forced myself out into the sunlight and manoeuvred down the crowded street, avoiding sidewalk driving, motor-revving scooters and kids on bicycles, their friends perched perilously standing on the back wheels' metal carriers. When I got to my hagwon, the mail was still in the door handles and the cleaning lady was sitting on the steps to my right. No one was there, the doors were locked, and I spent half an hour hunched against the wall near the bathroom trying very hard not to breathe in the urine vapour (an inevitable aspect of life in a country that doesn't flush toilet paper [too many people and an inferior sewer system, I suppose], preferring instead to deposit it in waste-paper baskets that are uncomfortably close to one's legs, given the airplane sized dimensions of most washrooms here. By 2pm, I'd had enough and my nausea was more than palpable. I told the cleaning lady via dramatic hand gestures and eye-rolls that I was annoyed and leaving and that I would come back later.

At home once more, I put my head down near my laptop and closed my eyes, feeling myself becoming thoroughly depressed. This week has been a bad one for me in this respect. I feel entirely isolated, a pattern that has certainly resonated quite strongly and painfully in my life. My boss has hired a new teacher (the third counting myself), a man who despite teaching English, can't seem to utter a single syllable to me, let alone acknowledge my "hellos" and "goodbyes." The principal has started having weekly staff meetings where everyone, including the secretary is involved. Or perhaps "everyone" is the wrong choice of words, because when they're all at the meetings, I'm alone at my table in the teacher's office. But then, who am I to call myself "someone," given what a tricky little thing this concept of my existence poses to me so frequently.

So far, they've changed the timetable around, decided on all sorts of changes together, go out for lunch meetings to which I am not invited, apparently—God forbid they involve the teacher with the busiest workload, a barely existent supper break and a monthly struggle to even get paid on time (as of today, despite having reminded the boss, my deposit is late once again).

In any case, I sometimes thoroughly hate my life and no matter how good things are sometimes, I suspect they'll always be this way. I am so tired sometimes and feel so used up and I don't know what to do but despair and complain and I suppose, let the worry gnaw on my brain, stiffen my shoulder-blades, and press so hard and so cruelly against my temples that my head feels about ready to pop.

I feel overwhelmingly sometimes that I and everyone around me runs around in patterns, concentric of course, much like frost on frigid car windows. No matter how much I strive to purge cathartically by writing or speaking about myself, I feel that as soon as feelings of sadness, frustration and disappointment return, I am helpless and unable to be consoled, even by those I care about. That in turn, causes more disappointment and frustration in the hearts and minds of those around me who wish me well, which leads me to feel even worse that I can't be so easily convinced that my life isn't as bad as it feels sometimes.

The idea that we all just repeat our actions, inevitably, or the actions of our forebears, is not a new one: "The sins of the father…" and all that, right? I feel so cornered and so obsessive some days, like how sitting bored in the back seat of the van as a child, I would count telephone poles and then the yellow lines in the road, silently in my head, wondering if there was always the same number of broken lines; if there was a set sequence that road painters followed before returning to the double-no-passing-under-any-circumstances-unless-you're-a-dangerous-jerk-in-a hurry-stripes, or if it really all was just random, an estimate. Perhaps I was just wasting my time and making myself carsick. I wouldn't be surprised, as it all sounds a little too familiar, anyways.

I remember how in the car, on frigid winter days, when the windows were all decorated up and down with pitches and drops, like kaleidoscopic diamonds (or other such icy jewel-shapes), made counting impossible, I'd trace the patterns in the frost slowly with a warmish finger, not relenting despite the inevitable numb that froze me. And I would quietly watch for the lines in the road as the upward pitches in the frost would roll down to the bottom of the window in a speeding, drippy tear-shaped drop that destroyed the whole pattern as it all fell apart.