Dealing with Loneliness Abroad (London, 2015)

“You can get lonely sometimes being surrounded by so many people, unable to find the place that you belong.”

This was something I wrote in my diary while I was interning in London back in 2015, doing photography. Back then, I was in my 3rd year of university. Everyone around me had started looking for jobs, grad schools, I felt like I was the only one who couldn’t find my purpose in life. That was why I decided to pause everything for a second and try something I knew I enjoyed; photography.

Fast forward 5 months, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped. This thing I thought was going to be ”the thing/my thing” turned out not to be and the epiphanies I thought I would attain, did not quite come to me. But I did seem to make some sense of what I had experienced and was hopeful that those days were indeed meaningful to me. Looking back now even, I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that those days made me who I am today.

Here’s what younger me had to write on my way back from this journey.

So right now, I am at Beijing Airport waiting for my transit flight back home and wow, I can’t believe it’s finally come to an end. London was an extraordinary city. Something is going on constantly there and there’s never a dull moment. This city is so special to me and will always be. I think if I had chosen US as a destination, it would’ve been a much easier experience for me. After all, I was familiar to the US culture and had a bit of patriotism stuck in myself. Of course there probably would’ve been the challenges of living in one of the most competitive societies in the world. It’s just, in the UK, I felt this loneliness I had never experienced before.

Not being able to understand the culture, the people, the puns, feeling left out, not feeling passionate about where you live, feeling like an absolute outsider. My need to succeed, my communication skills, thinking I can speak English, all of that purpose and pride were honestly crumbled into pieces. But that was when I actually wondered, why am I trying so hard? What for? Do I have to blend in to make friends? Can I be English when I’m actually Japanese?

I can’t. Simple as this, I am who I am and I can’t fragment myself a certain way.

I am Shiho I love photography. I hate discrimination, even though I unintentionally do sometimes. I speak English quite fluently except when I’m drunk, that’s when I stumble and stutter most. I am fully Japanese but at times I hate my own suffocating society that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go abroad. I believe that there’s beauty in anyone and anything and it’s the way you perceive a matter that allows it to grow and for you to grasp the beauty. I’m very for the aesthetic movement but not the structured kind. I love listening to people talk but my weakness is when I think of something I want to say, I can’t seem to get myself to shut up. That annoys me a lot but I’m currently working on it.

“Patience is the companion of wisdom“

I found this on a piece of paper stuck to the pavement on a rainy day. I think it’s a pretty cool coincidence I found this. I sometimes feel somethings are just so beautifully coincidental that I’m actually living in a TV show guided, directed by someone, like the Truman Show.

I used to want to be successful; financially and socially. Maybe I still do, but not as much as I used to. I guess London taught me the greatest lesson of all, to just stop trying and to let nature take its course. Ever since my dad left,I feel like I’ve always had this pressure to live life to the fullest but had perceived the meaning of that statement in the wrong way. It wasn’t just London that allowed me to realize this. It was traveling too. Traveling with people, with myself. I think it’s interesting when people say you get to understand your travel partner more than ever, because when you’re traveling alone, you analyze yourself so much. Seeing my own weakness, strengths…Of course it wasn’t just me who made me realize this. I’ve met so many interesting people. Travelers from all around the world, people with different stories, passions, hurt, all those midnight conversations, literally changed me, helped me realize it’s never the end of the world, and nobody can pressure you more than your own mind.

Life is too short, live it while you can.