At first, I was good. Walking excessively in Busan wearing my tourist shoes meant that I had little care about what I was eating nor the amount. But as the weeks came and went, that little person inside of me that whispered eat, eat, eat managed to take over. So I gave in. I ate bread – a huge trigger food for me. I laid in bed, defeated, my stomach, bloated, and I didn’t know what to do. I hated the feeling of being full. If my stomach bulged out just a little from food I would go into full panic mode. When I was younger, this resulted in a kind of panic exercise induced black out. However, on this day, I had no where to go to exercise, so I fell back on something that I swore to my college self I would not do anymore.
Today, you can start your new life! So why don’t you? You could if you wanted, if the world wasn’t a complete mess right now, you really could – This is what you tell yourself, this is what she tells herself. But she did this for 1095+ days, and suddenly, who she is, this is it. It’s not a bad thing, she hopes. Perhaps she’s better than who she was last year, the year before that, and hopefully, she’s better than who she was at 16, at 18, at 20.
The myth of childhood told me that when I got older, I would innately gain some kind of understanding about the world that would allow me to move forward both productively and confidently.
I felt strange. Not really a tourist or visitor, but feeling like one in my own city. Connected, but not necessarily, and really only just in the occasional situation, and occasional environment. I felt a bit fragmented like I had been unraveled and was desperately trying to piece myself back together, yet I was always missing a few bits, and I found that they were much more important than I originally thought they were. I spent much of my time in America wandering, both mentally and physically. Much of my days passed at the backs of coffee shops alone or wandering through bookstores trailing my fingers along shelves, yet buying nothing.
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