Today has dawned cold and depressing. My feeling for having to work while my heart isn’t in it makes me harbor a serious distaste for humanity this morning. I can’t quite decide what has put me in such a mood, but I reckon it stems from the news of the election shining a light on my own shortcomings.
I feel very alone. I see people every day but can do nothing to connect with them on that specially personalized level. There is this overwhelming despair at having the ones that understand me the most being so far away. And usually, when I get like this, I run to my grandma. The environment she creates is so without judgement and pressure.
The first issue I have with myself is the language barrier. I’m so daunted by my lack of fluency. I know so little. Most days my self-discipline is non-existent. It’s easy for me to make textbook examples of sentences but near impossible to manage the expertise and flow of conversation without having to think and translate before I speak. Just yesterday I practiced writing some of the old grammar point I learned in college and had them checked. I did well enough but I can’t be communicating with folks via notepad and pencil. Funnily enough, I did just that today to explain to one of my co-workers my sentiments about Trump. My words to him were, “Holding onto my freedom is the most important thing, I think. When a president makes a decision, it takes time to trickle down. If war happens, then I’ll worry.” Conveying this in Japanese was mentally taxing. It makes me want to escape to the mountains and be a hermit.
The second issue is that I feel extremely unattractive and insecure. I have this impression that I’m considered ugly here by being awash by all of the smooth and completely homogenized Japanese. I’m grimly aware of my own lack of culture and it has me questioning myself. “What can I possibly give to these people?” I’m certainly not looking to revolutionize anyone. I just don’t want to be a part of someone’s dark and dank background; taken for granted.
The whole general idea is that I’m painfully mindful of my own insignificance and uneducated state. Or maybe it’s my drive to please and I say whatever I can to look smart. I just know that it’s embarrassing that I know less about my own country than the students I teach.
A Journal for Ashley 