Hello! *waves at empty stage*

*clears throat* *looks around nervously*

I guess it’s not a surprise that nobody attended this party, since I am assuming everyone of you are stuck between four walls somewhere around the world huh. I mean, even the biggest event of the year for the world – the Tokyo2020 opening ceremony had like, zero spectator, so… I guess it only feels normal that I am standing alone on stage right now, with my sterilised mic, and through my very secure, high functioning made-in-Japan mask (#ad), popping open the confetti and… whispering (because loud voice is prohibited, apparently):

HAPPY 17 ANNIVERSARY.

To this blog. 17 Years old.

That makes it…. wait what? Is it graduation age? I graduated at 17. Cheesus Crust this is scary. So wait, this is not an anniversary, but a farewell party? Good lord now I’m glad I didn’t send out any invitations. That would have been awkward. I mean… I didn’t even bake cakes. You know, I’m recently gluten free and stuff like that.

Anyway, I do feel a little guilty that this is turning into a once-a-year affair, sort of like the Independence Day. Minus the face paint. The only one day you feel super woke and give the subject of celebration a concentrated dose of importance and attention, and then forget about it the rest of 364 days.

That’s how today feels. However other than the patriotic slogan (“When life gives you daikon, make kickass oden out of it”, or “At least we have daikon”, or, “Time is Daikon”… I haven’t decided yet, should I run a poll?) like how we always RT on Twitter, or a throwback of us with the national flag, there’s actually nothing much there could be said, in this celebratory speech.

It could end at just 300 words, but I am bad at doing that (a peek at the word counter tells me that we are already over 300), so while we’re at it, today I’m gonna share the final installation of my anniversary trilogy.

So maybe, let me start by saying that recently, I have come to get to know an amazing person, and his/her… or should we observe social correctness and use gender neutral pronoun here? Uh… What’s the latest trend? Ok maybe let’s use ze. Anyway, I bumped into ze under a very unusual circumstance. I will explain it later. But knowing ze is probably the best thing that happened in my life this year.

We quickly became the best of friends. We have been spending some time together almost every day, unless I was too busy or tired, and I was surprised to learn that I have never come to meet anyone who understood me so well. Like, from deep inside. Ze was there for me when I felt the most vulnerable, helpless…  As I slowly learnt to trust ze, I also started confiding in ze about all the insecurities and emotions I was going through. Ze never judges me. Ze is logical and rational, although ze doesn’t often give me advices, it is enough that ze just sits next to me, listens attentively, saying comforting and reassuring words to me, until I feel better. I don’t even know how to explain this, but from the bottom of my heart, I think… no – I KNOW, that ze only has the most sincere, caring, loving thoughts for me, and genuinely just want the best for me to be happy and free. It is crazy, but I really haven’t felt this cared for, in a long time. I know that I can open my heart for ze, and just trust ze completely.

Back to how we met… it was a little crazy. If you follow me on my IG stories, I recently talked about trying to meditate but was very annoyed at all sorts of guided meditation. When I was told to do things like, “imagine a warm, white light…” or like “notice how each breath is bringing you deeper…” or like “gently focus on the presence, and connect with your heart” or like “great… you are doing great…” I would just roll my eyes and be like, “How? Where? How warm? How deep? How far? Use what to connect? And also… how do you know I am doing great? Maybe I am not? You’re just saying it because you recorded this in 2018?”

And then proceeded to the kitchen and took a plastic fork and stabbed the meditation guru in ze mushroom-brown-lukewarm-light-penetrated left armpit…

Luckily it only happened in my semi-meditated mind. Phew. Well, looks like my visualization is not too shabby afterall.

Anyway, since I cannot do any form of guided meditation, but have memorized ALL the meditative phrases and can recite them at will, I have decided to… be my own meditation guru. I literally talked myself to sleep.

“Take a deep, cleansing breath.”
“Relax your eye, your jaw, your shoulders…”
“Let your breath guide you deeper, and deeper…”
“We will screw the botanical garden and river today, let’s just relax…”

I couldn’t remember which light went to which of my body part, but I fell asleep blissfully. And I thought, damn, that works! And then I repeated it the next day, and the next, and the next, it just became my sleeping routine these days. Soon after I also started experimenting with telling myself different things, including things that feel good, those stuff you often read in self-help articles, such as acknowledging the things that you have achieved that day, giving thanks and being grateful for things in life, telling yourself that you did great, that your pores are not really that big… etc etc.

Before I knew it, it turned into a full fledge self-hypnosis. Sometimes my mind flowed and was flooded with overwhelming emotions where I found myself sobbing non-stop. And then, as I was bawling my eyes out, there’s another calm, soothing voice telling me all sort of things that I wished so much to hear… It was like fantasy, I never imagined it to have such therapeutic effect…

Basically that was how I met ze. I found ze in my semi-meditated mind.

Up until this point in my entire life, I was desperately seeking approval, love, respect and recognition from someone else. I sought and chased my happiness all around the world (although in the end it is narrowed down to just Japan and I’m damn happy with it haha), but never once did I dare to seek it inwards. From within. Because I was so afraid to find out what’s inside. What if it’s just emptiness, bottomless darkness, pain and hurt?

I was shocked at how much I was afraid of myself, to the point I had to distance from me, and protect myself from me. That was how scary I was to me…

But I am glad I found ze. I can’t believe it took me so long to realize ze is all along, here. We started talking every night, about all sorts of mushy, fuzzy things that will be too awkward for me to type it right out here… and it will sound too damn freaky as if I am schizophrenic. But you get it. Things that I wish someone would say to me. Ze knows all of it and will not hold any of them back.

I think I finally know why they say, happiness is already in all of us. We just have to look within us to find it… Something that I would have so furiously roll my eye balls till the back of my head… but here I am, little by little slowly getting it.

That’s the happy ever after ending of my anniversary trilogy.

Wow. What a strange post this is. The reason this is the finale of an anniversary trilogy was because for the previous two years, they all turned out to be letters to myself, soul-searching. And this year, in 2021, I think I have found the answer. And my soul mate. And I know ze will keep ze promise.

Maybe yours is waiting around the corner for you too!

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