The Curve

It's 8 p.m. Friday night.

I just had the urge to be alone tonight, to take time out for… myself. Just myself, this yellow lamp and my dozens of chilled Budweisers in the fridge.

There's no internet connection still, so I open up iPhoto and began playing slideshows of pictures from all those years and months back.

They remind me of many things. The times, the places, the feelings… they do not fade one bit. I can remember them as if it was all just yesterday. I cannot help but smile: the good times were plentiful.

But most obvious of all is the people. Ah the people: some are still around, some having grown closer, some further, some having left embittered, and many, mostly indifferent.

The pictures also remind me of many events and periods of my life, some of which unbearably gruesome, others stirring up feelings of nostalgia, whilst countless others evoke a multitude of mixed emotions.


In many ways, I thought of coming here as an opportunity to (in a way) start life anew. I thought of it as a chance to begin from a clean slate where many of the baggages and unnecessary complexities from my past no longer existed.

I'd be honest: it doesn't feel that way. 

All I feel is this shadowing sense of insignificance; life if you think about it is pretty weird. It's as if all of the sudden, many of the things and the people whom you knew all the five thousand kilometers away no longer seemed to matter as much (if at all) as/like they once did before.

But then there are those of which whom you communicate with on a daily basis, all those five thousand kilometers back when you hardly talk to the people who live a mere five seconds from you. 

We were distributed tons of reading material upon arrival in uni. Leaflets and guides were poured on us as if their cost were immaterial. There was this section where the adaptation process of an international student to the local environment was described as a U-curve: happy and excited at first, one then experiences disillusionment and alienation, then collapsing into misery and depression, which at this period is represented by the lowest point in the U-curve.

Once the person has settled down properly and has gotten used to the place, and new and meaningful and lasting relationships developed, the person begins to thrive and starts to recover, eventually reaching the top of the other end of the U.

I recall telling my dad that I went through the whole curve on the first/second day itself. I recall breaking down like a little girl then --and only then-- and have never seen those symptoms described in the text ever again.

But I can't help but think of what I'm currently going through as some sort of alienation and disillusionment. But I currently have all that I need to survive, and more than enough to keep me happy as a human being. 

So why then am I in this solemn and introspective state of mind?

Sure as hell don't want to go into an emotional hole, I've been in enough of them! =O


(oh and by the way, also written in the guides were advice on finance, transport, use of words/slang/language, culture, safer sex, typical societal stereotypes, mention of tolerance towards homosexuality, where to go to for financial/emotion support as well as support for just about anything and everything! Cool huh? =D)