mrveitch

For a long time, I believed that I had had grown accustomed to my solitary life. My time in Shanghai has shown me that that is not wholly true. For the longest time I simply had no choice (or convinced myself that I didn’t) but to be alone. My time here has shown me that I simply did not have the right kind of company in my city and thus closed myself off to the community at large. When I went to IST, that lingered and then in Shanghai, I had a hard time being fully comfortable with the BU students I met and even found myself purposely avoiding people in general (I bought Beats Wirelss which makes ignoring people incredibly easy) I received the following message on Smartshanghai from a young woman:

“Hi! You seem so sweet and like you have such a fun attitude towards life” and was invited to join her for drinks upon my arrival in SH. I thought she was a local cougar preying on handsome foreigners. Still, I told myself I’d do some thing outside of my comfort zone and this was certainly out there.

I was quite surprised to meet a 21 year old who lived a good chunk of her life in the Canada. An hour later we realized we didn’t order anything when the waiter interrupted our conversation. Another hour after that and I was sure- I made a real friend.

i have hundreds of acquaintances; it’s easy to do that in China. But friends? Even back in the states my circle was quite small. This meeting was my first time since joining the Peace Corps that I got to be completely myself with someone I am now happy to call my friend. I looked at my phone once to show her something and it was the first time I felt awkward. I asked myself “why is this even be in my hand?”.

She revealed to me what it is that I’ve been missing for so long- a real, human connection. Now I’m back in Deyang searching for that feeling again. Wish me luck