Raindrop Thoughts

Rain is a funny thing. It changes with your mood. Its playful when you’re happy. It’s melodramatic when you’re sad. It’s foreboding when you’re vulnerable. Recently, I’ve noticed that it’s only soothing when you’re comfortable, and when you’re far away from home in a foreign place surrounded by strangers, all it is is a reminder of what you left behind.
Its been raining for about 7 hours now. I wasn’t surprised; the sky had looked expectant for a few days already. The rain had been bundled up in those murky depths(heights?) and needed to be released. Likewise, my thoughts and feelings have tumbled in my stomach for a while now and now, I’m letting them out.
My voice is begging to be let out as well. The only problem with living in a public dorm is just that – it’s so public. Even on the rare occasion that I return to an empty dorm room, like after lunch when I come back for a quick nap (customary in China), I’m not alone. There is always the possibility that there is someone just on the other side of the wall from me, or out in the hall, or just outside the door. I’m never alone, so I never get a chance to sing. Sure, I can hum a little or even sing a few lines at indoor-voice level, but I want to sing, to really sing. I want to sing my heart out at the top of my lungs. I want to sing where my voice will be heard, if not by anyone else then at least by me. I want my voice to carry, to glide through the air unobstructed, to fill a room or echo in a valley. My voice is like a dark green glass bottle. Usually I bottle up my feelings in this green glass bottle and periodically, like a message in a bottle, release it in the ocean of the shower or an empty room, somewhere where the sound of my feelings in my voice will float back so I can listen to them and understand. But here, the ocean is either so cluttered with other people or other sounds that my bottle gets crushed, or the muggy air sucks the sound right up and my bottle is lost again. So, my feelings can never get very far and instead stay bottled up inside like a lump in my throat.
This constant never alone thing would not be such a big deal if it weren’t for the ironic loneliness that comes with it. I now understand how a person can be surrounded by people, even people he or she knows, yet be completely alone. I talk to people all the time, every day. I made friends right away who eat with me and walk with me and take me shopping on the weekends. But these people aren’t my people. I don’t mean that politically at all, like my country’s people or my race’s people. I mean my people. My family. When I say family, I don’t mean necessarily mean blood relatives. Friends can be as much my family as cousins or siblings. Anyways, what I mean to say is that I miss home. There it is. But only at night when there’s no one to talk to or when it’s raining outside, pitter patter on my window, and I’m thousands of miles away from the people who I love and who love me most.
I guess it’s true what they say; you’ll never know what you have until you have it no longer. Beijing is great, but there’s really no place like home.
What if Beijing were home? That might not be as far from reality as you think. In less than a year, we’re going to have a house in the heart of Beijing and I am so excited. More on that later…