My plane had taken off before the sun even rose above the horizon. I took out the black pebble I brought. It looked like a piece of coal back in the flowerpot at home, but here - its surface had dulled; its color washed out; it looked smaller. How peculiar it is that when you take what you love from its home, it becomes so much less. This was not a peregrination. This was just a four-day trip to a place about 400 miles from home. But it had been a while since I got away from the city where we fell in love and meant it.
I like travelling. I like how you can go places to look for the landscapes that resemble the world inside your head with no roads and no maps. I like taking all the wrong turns and still think that they're the turns worth taking. I like the idea of having an extra place to contain my overwhelming thoughts in a way that I start to feel so small. I like to build another story on somewhere new, fairy tale or tragedy, there'd always be sunsets and skylines that will keep it, rear it, ripe it. And reap it just to set a fire that is enough to light up the towns. That's what people say, in order to dig a deeper hole, you need to empty what was in it. In order to learn something new, you make spaces for other things to stay. So I turned myself inside out and poured everything away. That was to make sure I wouldn't end up in a common shallow grave.
It was not until the second evening after a talk with my friends that I realized we're all healing. We touched one another's wounds as if our past couldn't hurt us here. We took it out like a weapon. We talked until our words tripped and fell, picked themselves up, and dusted the dirt off their knees. Life has a flavor but it's buried under the soil. Life has a flavor you'll never know until you fall face-down in the dirt. Mint and hazelnut, I can never forget how it tasted. We might be young, but we're old enough to see that we can still be free when we're shattered. It will pour tomorrow but we're not weak today. From broken homes to battle scars to who we are, I've seen the many possibilities of loving people with all the little pieces. That night I thought I fell asleep in the sea, and it wouldn't be any scarier even if I jumped head-first into the water because there was no sadness for me to drown in.
I sent my future self a postcard the next day and attached a runaway smile that was worth the entire following year. If anyone could've saved me, it would've been myself. On the way to the airport, I reached my hand into the pocket and found the pebble I brought. It looked even duller. I threw it into the plants at the entrance and for whenever I come back, it should get smaller. You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. And when it does, you will have found what you've always been looking for, or something much greater than that. But before this, you might first need to put yesterday behind. I have found a way to live. And it has been in my back-pocket after years of never knowing it was there.
While we were at the top of the world where it seemed like the sun was only seven miles away, I thought of the rusted empty shell I left behind and how much I had changed that I wouldn't ever want to come back home and be the person I used to be. No matter where I am, in Hong Kong or Taiwan, I would be carrying this new shell with me and I will start writing a new chapter that is so unfamiliar that the memories couldn't tip-toe around my mind and try to stir me.
The plane landed and it was getting dark. Coming back to this small city felt like holding hands with all the things I lost. But it didn't hurt a bit because I've taken it down with all the strength I'd been saving up. And this time, I opened my eyes. Someone once said to me, "Never close your eyes when there's something for you to see." And this is what I'm telling you and myself, too. Because right now, my God, you should notice how the city lights are looking at you as if you are something so much more than you could ever call yourself.
