For the first three years, I thought about London every single day. Literally. Because when you’ve had those omg-I-love-my-life epiphanies mid-day just by walking down the street, how can you not think about that?
I was living in the past.
I knew what lay ahead of me in HK, and I still chose to come back, but it didn’t change the fact that settling in life here was difficult beyond imagination.
I had been reprogrammed. I had a new outlook on life. I felt disconnected with the people who had been constant in my life for the past 10 or 20 years. Because when 結婚生仔買樓上車 aren’t your pursuits of life, what meaningful conversations can you have? And you can only go on whining about your mundane, dissatisfying, unoriginal job for so long, until you resort to talking about mobile data plans just to keep the conversation going. And I wasn’t even using an iphone.
Life was slowly sucking my soul away. And I thought, I’m not going to live a life that good again. So let’s wallow in melancholy and fuck society.
Strangely, it got better along the way. I made a short trip back to London in 2013 and I left there peacefully without any drama. Anti-climatic right?
I was finally coming to terms with my new life.
Then, things started to looked up. I started a job that I was passionate about (at least at that time), I picked up a new old hobby and I found a new dream place to be in (Hi Nashville!).
I’ve learnt to live in the present and life was pretty awesome (yay!). But I didn’t realise how this newfound connection with the present would shake me up. Because now I can’t say ‘fuck society’ and pretend the social norms and values that I have resisted but also internalised don’t trouble me.
Oops.
One lesson these five years has taught me, is that living is not only about happiness. It’s also about finding purpose, choosing your life and staying true to yourself. It’s a constant struggle. And that’s okay, because I’m living life.
