Today, I turn 22 years old. Another year gone to look back on. What was obviously going on with me this year was living and going to school in Japan.
You know, the first semester I was here, I feel like I really wasted it and I could punch myself for it. I understand why it happened, and looking at the considerations I don't actually think it was avoidable, but now I'm left wishing I could stay another semester to make up for it.
The first few weeks I was here, I really regretted coming and wanted to go home so badly. The attitude that stemmed from that had me rushing home after school so that I could be lonely and emo by myself; I dove into the usual numbing leisure activities that help me forget my problems. I wasted several months doing this. :\
My low ability to speak Japanese when I first arrived was a root of such bad feelings, I think. I couldn't really have a conversation with Japanese students, or the other foreign students who couldn't speak English. It was around December where I started to snap out of it, thanks to finally adjusting to my surroundings and my language ability increasing dramatically. By January I could finally have a conversation with someone else at a pace that didn't make it inconvenient for the other person to talk with me.
All through the first semester, though, I was still living as if I was on vacation. In
this entry I lobbed some pretty hard criticisms at the people I felt were here for no real valuable reason; although I wasn't nearly as bad as the braindead girl I used as an example, I truly wasn't using my time very well. (At least I was making an effort to improve speaking Japanese. 9_9)
Then the semester ended, and I returned to Florida for 6 weeks during break. I think that when I look back on those 6 weeks, I'll see that they had a big impact on my life - I can even see it now.
My favorite thing to do is sitting in the quiet living room of my parents' home, the glass sliding doors open, with the clean warm air of Florida in the spring filling our house's tall ceilings, and the pristine view of the pool and forested backyard outside. It reminds me of being a kid, where I'd sit on the porch and play Pokemon Silver on my bright green Gameboy Color, except nowadays it's Pokemon Platinum on my metal pink DS (and in it's Japanese).
No place feels more relaxing, more embracing, more safe than the porch at my parents' house. That was how I spent most of my days while I was in Florida during that time. And during that time, I thought a lot. I thought a lot about Japan, about how I'd spent my time there so far, about the other people I'd met, about the things I'd seen and done, about where my life was going.
I concluded that I wasn't satisfied with how I'd spent my first semester, and that I wasn't satisfied with where my life was going either. For those thoughts to really materialize in my head... it was stressful, but I think it was a big step for me. I decided that when I went back to Japan for the second half of my exchange study, I would do more things and make more Japanese friends and push my language ability as far as I could get it. And I decided that I would have to start growing up and thinking about my future. That decision culminated into what I wrote a few weeks ago.
And now after all that, here I am. I have a lot of Japanese friends now that I'm dreading having to leave behind when I go home. I want to take them all with me. My friend Jun, my "not-boyfriend", included. I really hope he does well on the Toefl and makes it. Even all the other Canadians and Americans and Europeans I know, I don't want to say goodbye to them, either. But I have to, and it's depressing. It's not like if I came back to Japan to visit my old friends they'd be here. For most of them I'll probably never see them again after this.
I don't want to leave Japan now, which is a real 360 of
how I felt before. But I know I have to go home, because I have to graduate, I have to decide what I'm doing next, I have to enter what I feel is a very very volatile and unstable stage in my life. My brain knows I can do whatever it is I decide to do, but it's at constant battle with my lack of confidence and natural pessimism.
I'm going to try my best! >_<
......and thanks for reading my tl;dr, lol.