~.~
Not much to say about Japanese Christmas other than... "fried chicken" and "cake." I guess that's all it is here. My host family hasn't celebrated Christmas for years and made a valliant effort to do it this year for my sake... but it's just not Christmas. It felt forced and hurried and sort of pathetic. Afterwards, my host sister scurried off to hide in her room. I wasn't long in doing the same. So much for "no expectations," ne?

I think this whole experience is supposed to lend me some insight about how different life is all over the world and how, you know, America isn't the answer to it all. But instead I'm just sad. Why is there Christmas here at all, if not to try to be like America somehow and fail?

I don't like the things I'm learning. They make me feel bitter and resentful and that makes me feel old. It's impossible for me to already be settled in my ways... I'm only twenty-one! I guess saying it that way just makes nine years till thirty seem even shorter.

When I was a child, the world could do no wrong by me. If it did, I wouldn't remember it a day or a week later. And now I spend weeks and months mired in the same emotional bogs, and years even trying to fix the same missteps. This even when I remind myself there is no black and white. This even when I can still sometimes see the magic around me.

Forgive me for sounding like the blonde bimbo from American Beauty but I absolutely despise the thought that I might just be... normal. Normal boring thoughts, normal boring life, normal boring aspirations. Always grasping and always falling short. Uninspired.

Still, if "normal" means the same as almost anyone, that shouldn't be bad, should it? Being normal should mean that I'm surrounded by thousands of other people just like me. So, then, why do I feel so alone?

There are truths held still deep in my heart, but it's hard to place a lot of hope on those things. When the most important and wonderful thing in your life is also the most painful and most difficult thing and shows no signs of ever changing, it's not easy to want to go on with it.

When I was a child, the world could do no wrong by me and I could do no wrong by it. With one misstep, I might find myself chastised or punished but no further lacking to those around me. Now all I have is to speak one word or lift one finger and the entire castle walls come crumbling down. If I am good enough for one person, I am fallen in the eyes of others. I care too much or too little. I try too hard or not enough. Few are the times when I feel or hear that where I've gone and what I've done, or even where I am at the moment is just right. It's never good enough... to find that balance I have to push further, push beyond, push outside of myself.

And it's either pain and compromise for myself or pain and compromise for others. Such is the way of the world, I guess. I don't like feeling that things like this are the lessons I should be learning. Ignorance is bliss. C'est la. But I remember thinking that even when I was a child.

So. Pointless entry for a pointless existence. But I don't mean to be miserable and depressing... just to ponder if maybe I should be accepting the pointlessness of it all instead of damaging my ego looking for my own inspired purpose.

The truth is, actually, I think I know where I belong. But it's not a place that I can go. The one thing I want is the one thing I cannot have... and for all I've learned, I simply cannot begin to accept that.

Do normal people think this way?

Gragh, shove it and forget everything I just said. The truth is I'm just lonely and the only person who understands me is even farther out of reach than ever before. If there's no one to talk to, all this stupid garbage in my head goes up here. It doesn't mean anything.... just noise... that's all...