A little over a week ago, I woke up before the sun had risen. My friend and I climbed into a taxi. My hands held tightly to my camera, as if it were my own child, and our eyes were barely open enough for us to tell the taxi driver where we were headed. He struck up a conversation with us–in Chinese–about where we were from and what we were doing up so early in the morning. I managed to keep up about 90% of the time, and other 10% of the time I guessed the meaning from the words I did understand. Compared to my Chinese ability year ago, it was a massive step up.
When we reached about two kilometers away from Qixingtan, our driver hit a dog. The whole charade was insane: he apologized to us in Chinese after we had just skidded to a stop with the dog under our car. The dog ran away petrified while the driver got out of the car, yelled to a man on the other side of the road by the dog, picked up his bumper, put it in the back of the car, and we were off again, but not before another sorry in Chinese. We were too tired to even process until we got to the beach, paid for the cab, and found ourselves standing there asking what the hell had just happened.
I’m in love with all things nature, thus a visit to the beach to see a sunrise with no obstructions on the edge of the Pacific Ocean was a must during vacation. With the last month being so downright crappy and annoying to deal with, a vacation with nowhere to be, no problems to worry about, and minimal phone handling was something I wanted. Something I needed. It was a time for me to start over.
Now, I’m in the in between: the place where I can see what I’ve said goodbye to and what lies ahead. It’s a place of indifference. You have to choose not to care, because sometimes that’s the only way to move forward without things hurting anymore. You have to forget about lost potentials and dream about the new ones. Create new goals, make new plans, and everything will fall into place. Because the truth is, what lies ahead of you is much, much more rewarding than what you once had faith in. And you have to trust that, no matter how hard it is, and take action.
Hualien lit a spark in me that motivated me to finally let go. I don’t care how silly I look anymore, I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, and I certainly don’t care how long it takes to get to the goals I want to achieve, but I’ll do it anyway. Maybe it’s the lingering vacation vibes from Hualien still, but I haven’t felt this excited about things in a long time. Right now, it doesn’t matter what has to be done, or what decisions I make, as long as I make the most important person in my life happy: me.
