I hadn't been posting for a while. To be honest I'm a little confused and I don't know what to write.
So many things had changed in my life. When I started writing this blog I was still living in Poland.
Now it's already my third year in Japan.
Since I remember I have been trying to live well-controlled life. I loved making plans, to-do lists, I knew how I want to be in two, five, ten and even thirty years!
Surprisingly my moving to Japan wasn't planned at all. After two years I am still sometimes feeling a little weird when I realize I am surrounded by only asian people and I catch myself staring at gaijin (foreigner). Naturally, as born-in-Japan, mixed-race person I was lucky enough to spend whole my childhood between two countries: Poland and Japan. Well, it wasn't part of my plan too. I had been flying to Japan to visit my grandparents every two-years at mine and my older sister's summer vacation's time. When I think of it now, "summer returnings" were the happiest times of my childhood years but the same time, they gave me the most painful and heartbreaking moments when I had to leave my, getting older and smaller every year, grandmother and grandfather.
I remember watching them -waving hands- from taxi's car window. Till the moment they disappear completely. Every summer when we were not going there back, I cried and cried very hard to my mother. I wanted to go back to Japan. I wanted to live there. For me it was a land of happiness.
My father was a only-child. I had no cousins to play with in Poland. And the parents of my father passed away very early. I hated Poland. I was bullied at school, racial discriminated by my teachers and on the streets. It was a small city in southern Poland. I looked more like an asian, I had unusual, non-polish name - now I understand - it wasn't my fault but they just couldn't leave me alone. I was different than others.
Being and feeling different growing up was the reason I wanted to live a 'normal', very down-to-earth, well-controlled-life. Get married, have kids, build a house some day. So did I. Or I though I do. I found a boyfriend, we were much in love. I wanted to marry him when he returns from military which was a must at that time for young men in Poland.
But seems like it wasn't given to me to live such life. My boyfriend was a drug addict and drug dealer. He had been disappearing from time to time from home and I was going out looking for him. There were weeks of no sign from him. He escaped military service. He promised me to give up drugs but he never did. I kept believing, because he was the most intelligent person I have ever met in my life. He taught me it is ok being who you are, he was the first to compliment me I was mixed-race.
It was a time of lots of lies. Mine to my parents, his to me.
After I graduated middle school my parents send me to live and study at different, bigger city - Cracow. It wasn't planned as well. My sister, who was very ambitious from early age- attending school and music-school the same time since 7 or 8, always studying at home - she asked my parents if she can move to better high school than our small city was offering. After three years my parents decided I will follow her footsteps. Wasn't I ambitious too? I loved writing, I have been writing since I remember. But all I wanted was a life "like others have". Like my best friend who by the way is married now and is expecting their first baby.
Although I was skipping most of my classes at middle-school to enjoy my teenage-years of so precious first love, I had managed to score high marks and get into one of the best high-school in Cracow. I told my boyfriend about it, he was happy for me. He said its good for me. At that time I was hoping to keep seeing him at the weekends when I return to my "hometown". We said goodbye on the sunny day, the summer was close, I was leaving to Japan.
When I think of it now, I had never taught I was not going to see him ever since any more in my life.
He went missing soon after I left. I was trying to find him many years later but no one knew where he faded away.
My hope for stable life was gone. No love to go back to, the future we had planned together was gone forever. Year later my mother left my family to permanently live in Japan. It was the beginning for us - all of my family members to live separately. I don't know if there is anything more sad in life than going back to an empty house. The very first day I returned home on a friday and I cooked myself a dinner in an empty kitchen, I couldn't swallow any food because of the tears which I was trying to control. I kept telling myself I have to be strong. Of course I understood everything. My mother had to go to look after her parents. But it wasn't changing the fact that it wasn't a life that I wanted. Nor something I could had planned.
I seeked for stability. I wanted to take control of my own life. I couldn't live any more between two countries, two cities, living half-life not fully tasted, not knowing who I am and where I belong. I knew there are things I can not change but I wanted to gain an independency to finally run away from that circle of longing and reuniting to leave and long again. That was the first time I refused going back to Japan with my mother when she had visited us in Poland. I got engaged. I wanted to live my own life. That was the first time in my life I shouted at my mother. She left. My grandmother died few weeks later.
Today I am sitting in Tokyo. Drinking wine on my own. There is something I can not control about my life. I had been looking for a stability whole my life. But I gave up. I accepted the fact I can't do it. I finally realized, it is not because I was born mixed-race but because it is not the way to find my happiness.
My childhood tough me no one have a choice to decide who you want to be born as, my teenage love tough me I can not put all my desires and hopes in a person because some people come and go no matter how much we wish them to stay. It is that way. I must let go the things that are not controllable.
So do I have a control of my life as a grown-up? Again, no. I choose, or I was chosen to write. Magazines are not doing well. I am young and I need to decide what to do. I know how I want my career to look like, I know which direction I want to go. But.. "But" - there is always something.
So I realize it is better to keep it simple. Well-controlled life is a life being honest with yourself. Listening carefully your own voice. Not to longings, not to desires but to your own sober voice. Try and see what works. Not giving up but learning and constantly growing. When I look back, I was always trying to find someone not to feel loneliness anymore, I was always fearing of showing my true emotions. Opening up. I was caged, hurt very deeply when there was no reason to be caged nor to feel hurt. I had to learn to let go. Not to feel anger but move on to the next chapter.
Instead of well-controlled life I have chosen to live my life well. Doing what I love. Being good for other people. Writing. Working hard for my future. Dreaming. Watching stars at the warm evenings, smiling to a little cat crossing my road on the way home. Love instead of hate.
The key to the true freedom is in your heart. You have to let go the past - the pain, the people and believe in yourself. We are all born free. Free to love. Free to be happy. Free to dream and make your dreams come true. And there is no one who can take this treasures away from you. We are born with them.
When you are sad - be sad, when you want to cry - cry. When you love - love truly. Do not control it. It's a life.
Yours,
ATO
