Isn't it? Innit? – Finding one's feet (or flippers)
I think I’ve rewritten this draft way too many times. This is the 5th time I’ve started a new document. By god, I do hope this is the last one.
I got on the wrong train. I thought I would die. I didn't. I think I lost years off my life with how anxious I was. This was taken at Selby. The sky was very nice and purple.
How do I start? Lesson 1: Nothing ever goes according to plan.
I think most people who have spoken to me (earnestly) during my whole process of going on an exchange would know that it was an exceptionally arduous process. Logistically, it felt like it was falling apart on every end and at some point I thought it was never going to happen because, shock-horror, I would experience some other kind of speed bump and go through another near breakdown and then wonder what on earth all the pain was for. Now that I’m here, I feel kind of underwhelmed? Is it because I am anxious and emotionally extreme by nature? And am feeling nothing strong in particular? I am pretty sure that once I get out of my slump, I’ll go on some extended rant about the excruciating process it took to get here.
Lately, and I can’t tell if it’s the weather and I’m one of the cursed 5 million here who suffer from SAD, but I feel unlike myself. York is a beautiful place, that’s definitely true. The people here have been especially nice. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing. (Jasmine from the future: HA! You thought!) Maybe that’s why I feel less and less like myself.
I think I really only started noticing something was off when drafting this first blog post took much longer than expected. Then I stopped reading. Then I stopped writing. Then I stopped going on walks. All I did was cook and watch YouTube and catch up with my class readings, I guess. I don’t know…? It’s just that I wouldn’t be pulling this kind of stuff in Hong Kong. I would either be doing those things or going on long-winded but circular emotional rants (as people can attest).
Which is to say, do I miss Hong Kong? I don’t. I’m surprised to say I don’t miss it. I thought leaving it would make me realise I was meant to be *here* all along even though I always thought otherwise and then I’d have to learn to confront this fact like a true coming-of-age story and all. But I’m realising I may be a lot more malleable than I realise, and maybe the wannabe angsty romantic in my heart somewhere is kind of sad that my (likely) eventual departure from Hong Kong is not going to hold too much weight after all. If 20-year-old me is good with it, any age older will do even better, let's be honest.
Do I miss people? I don’t think I’ve felt more fine on my own in so long. I’m good. I’m surviving and I haven’t sobbed. But that’s the thing. I also haven’t laughed. I feel so normal. Like I feel like I should be feeling some, at least some, kind of extreme emotion. That would be so much more like me. Something feels terribly off in my feeling of general okayness. I’m so used to feeling things so strongly I can’t understand why I’m just generally so neutral about life right now. Maybe I’m turning sad and middle aged too soon? Sometimes I give myself pep talks in front of the mirror going: ‘Jasmine, you’re supposed to be going through an emotional roller coaster at any given minute; what’s wrong with you?!’
Do I miss Hong Kong? No. But do I miss the ‘me’ that was there? I think I kind of do. That or maybe I’m just not used to this version of ‘me’. A ‘me’ that doesn’t have to perform in front of a gaze. In front of people who supposedly know me. Who think they know me. But would this just mean that I’m boring when no one is looking? That’s kind of sad. Would this mean a large portion of the more interesting parts of myself is performative? I can’t tell if that’s sad or normal or if normal is sad anymore. It’s odd to say you wished you had someone to perform to on a day-to-day basis.
It would kind of be hilarious if I ended up hating my exchange experience because it would be so contrary to what everyone would have expected, including myself. I’m not there yet though! I’m still willing to be hopeful. Albeit in a very neutral, very boring sense. I’ve only started class. I’ll get into the swing of things!
(Jasmine from the future: Boy was I dramatic! I am indeed doing better now; I posit it was the new-place-blues hitting when I first wrote this. It happens!)
Teaching yourself to not exist has interesting ramifications. Firstly, my posture is horrendous. I slouch too much. I’m constantly shrinking into myself. Need to stop doing that.
And then, there’s the whole ‘people not seeing you’. Teaching yourself to allow other people to forget you exist. So they do not have to scrutinise you and everything that you are. I spend a lot of time trying to ‘not exist’ in Hong Kong. One could argue that my success rate at this whole ‘not existing’ endeavour has been terrible but I digress. I hate when people notice I’m different. It inevitably happens because, well, because. I’ve always tried my best to blend in and to not have to impose on anyone and to be as tiny and as unbothersome as possible. Outside of the people I’m comfortable with, I don’t like talking about myself. And I’m very picky about the people I am comfortable with. My mantra when I head out is ‘don’t stand out don’t stand out don’t stand out’.
Here, I don’t stick out. ‘Huh? But Jasmine! You’re in the UK, no?’ But here’s the thing. I am. And so I’m your standard Asian student. With a nondescript but somewhat Anglophone accent that tends to confuse. No one asks about me (earnestly). There are so many me’s out there. I get that, but also I think for the first time in my life I want to be seen. It’s like ‘wait, I swear I’ve got an interesting backstory’. But the problem is that it isn’t obvious and that I never put myself out there. I never have. I’ve taught myself to dislike ‘putting myself out there’ to emotionally survive. It makes me feel icky. Reversing years of social conditioning is challenging stuff. And so people mind their own business and I too. And I’m glad people mind their own business and leave me be and then understand that racism is a thing here and there too, and can throw around long words that explain how big and bad it is, and that it’s awful but I always feel like I’m talking to nothing. At least in Hong Kong, the disdain is eminent and visible. In here, a lot of stuff feels like virtue signalling. I don’t really feel like I exist even though I’m there physically and these long words that my parents or people like them will never understand validate my experience. I’m often left confused.
What else am I realising?
That I really am not as stupid as I genuinely think I am. I had initially thought that going to the UK as an English second major was very ambitious of me. I was like ‘oh lord, everyone is going to have read Shakespeare and be so much smarter than me and I will feel like an absolute loser and I’ll have to learn to recontextualise myself, yes yes’. This is about 60% true. But if we’re keeping with today’s theme, y’all can guess where this is going.
Class is still kind of as awkward as it is in Hong Kong. Which was the funniest part to me because I find the awkward silences in Hong Kong excruciating to endure. Even if I am complicit in them. Harhar! Ex-British colony things? Like mother; like daughter? HOHO! That was a terrible metaphor! My, my… I’m not here to erase years of painful history. Dear me! (On my next post, I’m going to start referring to my readers as ‘love’ and that’s about as much of the vernacular I’m going to pick up; let’s bet)
It’s also really interesting listening to people talk here. There are loads of people that are smart, I must preface, but I’ve also made interesting observations and reflections. Most importantly, before I say what I am about to say: I do not think I’m the smartest bih on the planet. There’s loads I can learn from folks for sure. But, here me out! I think what was interesting about HKU was that it’s an English medium of instruction, in a city where English is the pseudo-official language, but where practically everyone has a different mother tongue to it. Huh. Pause. I’m realising how much deliberation must come with having to say things in class. This is something a friend of mine, currently on her own exchange in UC Davis, also noticed.
Of course, I feel terrible for my professors who are just itching for somebody to say something in the massive halls, but then again, I get what it is to be that student. You’re trying your best to formulate an answer, that doesn’t make you sound stupid, that contributes to the class discussion, everyone is going to be listening to you, in a language vastly different grammatically slash linguistically. And it’s not like academics is easy to talk about for people who are already fluent in English. Top that off with several cultural components (that this post will not get into because it will be toooo long). No wonder no one says anything. By the time we've formulated something to say, we’re all so mortified by the silence it would make things even more awkward to bring something up.
How have I come to this conclusion, you may ask. In Cantonese, there is the term ‘blowing water’. Which roughly translates to ‘saying very little of value’. Now, this happens in Hong Kong in Cantonese of course. But it’s interesting to hear in English, from people who have it as their mother tongue, during class as well occasionally. I have to admit, I internally say ‘huh?’ at the stuff people say quite a bit. Wait, I guess I come off as too harsh. There is most definitely stuff I can learn from the folks here during class, but some of the stuff people say is, for lack of a better term, kinda wack. I deeply respect the professors I have and I am finding class very interesting. It’s just— humans are also very interesting. Cultural context is very interesting. Learning to understand yourself is very interesting.
The sky was very nice this day. I sniffed some books in town. I know this picture seems generic but I promise pretty skies are a rarity here during this season. Leave me alone! I took what I could get!
I think I’m too contemporary for this kind of setting.
This is even more hilarious because Tom (current programme director) noted once that there were lots of old people at York. My flatmates confirmed this not long after I made a small comment regarding the demographic. This was not something I noticed during my research. I was only aware York was close to the Yorkshire Moors and my Wuthering-Heights-loving-butt was very excited about it. And that it was a location that was known for being boring. Sign me up!
In class, I like linking stuff we’re reading to more contemporary issues we’re facing today. I have a harder time coming up with what the text means to/within itself honestly. The discourse surrounding studying English always runs around whether or not studying such a thing will be productive to the whole (What is ‘the whole’? Capitalists? An increasingly individualistic society? Lord knows! Let’s do a close reading of that, shall we!) in the future. A lot of people think studying English literature is stupid because, how can you save the world with that? I argue: you are absolutely right! But to consider a discipline as something that solely works within itself and nothing else outside of it is horribly stupid too. You don’t create a field and expect it to work within itself only. Who created it then? Who uses it then? Did the chicken come first or the egg come first? Dinosaurs. They came first. Well… not really. Do you see what I mean? Things are evolutions of other things and will continue to be evolving in accordance to, say it with me: their surroundings, AKA an external. It’s cool that you can quote Austen and Rumi, but it’s also barely productive if you cannot do anything else with it. We are all aware of this! Then again, this is all unless your intended trajectory is (the occasional echo chamber that is) academia. So touché!
Also, I was aware I read a lot. But I was not aware I read a lot. Not outrageously I mean. I’m quite sure I’ve spotted a few folks who read as much as I do. But I was also not aware that reading contemporary women’s fiction would also be weirdly niche here. I swear I read bigger name titles from that genre anyways, like the stuff that gets longlisted for The Women’s Prize. But: oh wells. *sigh* Maybe things will turn up when I take the module on the publishing industry.
Can I also just say that I’m a massive fan of the selection of books in the libraries here?
~
Have a picture of the ducks that frequently show up outside my window! I’ve named them Ben and Jerry. They’re literally always together. I love them.
Those are my ramblings from this month! I will stop writing here because this will become outrageous in length soon oho! I think the blogs will come out more stably from here on out now that I’m more :D and less :) , but for now! Adieu!