Chapter 6: When Will I Learn?

Note from Author: Ah ha! New seconds! Welcome! Sorry you haven’t seen me around yet. Actually I realised that I don’t blog when I’m not feeling myself and so I should be wary when I haven’t blogged for so long. My following post will explain.

It’s sort of hard to keep my eyes open as I try and read off my computer screen because they are swollen from my weeping the previous night. I remember that I had been reading a testimony written by a friend and something about it’s awkward honesty had struck my heart. And I realised how much I had been trying so hard to put on a strong front in the past few months of exchange. But in doing so I now felt so distant from everyone, separated by that fascade. And my friend’s awkward honesty had melted away that fascade and left me naked to my loneliness.

I have an old scar left over from primary school days – just after I had changed schools. I hung out with a group of friends; they were nice girls, but I just didn’t fit in. I wasn’t yet the sort to be someone I was not in order to fit in so I just spent my time in misery: weeping late at night when no one was around. I didn’t know who to turn to and what to tell them. For the first time in my life I felt the wretchedness of loneliness. And last night as I realised how I have put a glass wall between myself and everyone; how I had closed myself in – that same wretchedness comes back to haunt me and I cannot refrain from weeping like a small child alone in the night.

Now I sit here, wondering when I will learn that though I think I will be more respected and admired for putting on a strong front, there is no worth in being respected and admired for who you are on the outside. But when I break down, open a new email reveal my complete mess, ineloquent, rambling, afraid, not sure what to say for fear of being seen as selfish… 

I open my inbox the next day to find love poured forth to me.

When will I learn?