The Need to Belong

This is a little late, but my dad went back to China last Saturday. The week before that, my mom and little brother went back to China. This year, I have spent more than a month of summer with my family, which is more time than I usually spend with them since they relocated to China. It's been a long time since I've cried about leaving people. But as I packed up my things in the empty hotel room and drove off to Annie's house, I found myself crying.

This summer has been quite eventful, in good ways and bad. It's definitely not how I had expected it to be. My ideal summer after graduation was to be going on some sort of graduation trip with friends (2-week cruise to Bahamas/Carribeans, trip to Europe, or Asia hopping), possibly go on a road trip, continue my usual summer trip to Taiwan, and just relax. Instead, I found myself constantly moving, from a sublet -> friend's house -> Taiwan -> friend's house -> hotel -> friend's house, and finally, back to Berkeley [5 more days!]. Life suddenly got so much more complicated as I struggled to juggle multiple things at once, from finding a place to live to finding a job to simply just be happy. Now that summer has come to an end, it seems the only thing I managed to accomplish on my list of my ideal summer is my trip to Taiwan, and I guess, some relaxation.

Every year, something happens in my life where I just feel myself falling, losing grasp of myself. And during that time period of depression, confusion, and doubts, I always come to some sort of realization. Every realization is different, but it all seems to follow the same theme, theme of loneliness.

I've always found myself searching, searching for something that can help me fill this empty void, this need to feel that I belong somewhere. This all goes way back to my identity crisis that I've been going through since high school, trying to figure out if I was Taiwanese, American, or both. I still haven't completely figured it out, and I think it will be a while until I do. I need to find out where I belong first. All this constant moving has made me feel insecure and not sure where I should be heading. And I have no safe zone. No place that I can call my own. And that is how I know that even though I have family and friends who are out there, I am still, essentially, all alone.

Throughout the course of my college career, I have looked around for something I can be a part of. I participated in floor activities. I joined different clubs. Sometimes things worked out for a bit, other times they didn't. And then I found OASES. And I thought I had finally found something that can help me fill this void. I also found Taiwan, and thought the same thing. But now that I've graduated from college, reality settles in and I find myself all alone again.

There are so many things I want to accomplish in my life. The cool thing about them is that they can be done practically anywhere. I just need to find the right place.

So now I ask myself, where exactly do I belong? How do I find this? Do I find a location or organization first? Or am I looking in the wrong direction and should be looking for a someone instead? [this leads into the next post...]