I've been wondering why seeing status updates and pictures from my old friends, my old life, often cause me pangs of pain. I've realized that part of it is simple jealousy, but part of it is that the place in their lives that I used to occupy is being filled. I guess I kinda thought that my absence would be more like a vacuum than a blank canvas, but soon there will be no white left at all.

That's a good thing though, right?

these are some times.

Sometimes, I stop running myself ragged; sometimes I stop filling my life with noise, activity, chaos.

Sometimes I sit in silence.

I close my eyes, and sometimes,

sometimes.

Sometimes in the silence something, somewhere inside me

screams

Why are you here?? WHY are you doing this?

Sometimes, only sometimes, I can't answer

It's probably a good thing I can't visit home this summer.

Avoidance

I started watching online tv when I came to Japan as a way to deal with culture shock, loneliness, boredom.

It has consumed the better part of my life now. It is an addiction. A very real and powerful one.

I am so caught up in this online entertainment pseudo-life, that I am barely living in the real one.

I am not facing my issues, not facing conflict, not facing the real difficulty and beauty of life here. I am numbing it. Numbing everything.

Reality has become too much to face now. I am afraid to turn it off.