Better late than never.

I've been having a lot of anxiety towards my return home. Even though I'm only going to be back for less than a week it scares me. Well, I should be more specific really... I'm having a lot of anxiety towards returning to Berkeley.

Like... I don't want to see... people. I've noticed that the thought of running into people from the past scares the crap out of me. Even if they didn't really have any particular meaningful role in my demise, I still fear.

I tend to associate places with events. It's why I can never go back to Boston, really. The place reminds me of too many things that I want to forget. But Berkeley should be different. I spent almost four years of my life there and had many good memories among the bad ones.

I'm riding my bike through campus. It's beautiful weather here in Shanghai. Sunny. Cool. Breezy. Why am I so ready to throw this place away? And relationships with so many people who may not have even known what was going on inside my head?

I started thinking about what I'm doing in Shanghai... besides for occasional studying and working on my portfolio. I mean, what am I really doing in Shanghai. Did I come here to find myself, or did I come here to run away?

I remember once when I was six, my parents got into a fight. My mom walked out of our little apartment in North Hollywood, got into our one and only car... a broken down BMW, and drove away. She came back two days later and said nothing. Sometimes people leave for a short while when they know they have responsibilities. In this case: me. But then sometimes people leave for a while, and once they've past a certain time, they never come back. They stay away because they never came back to take care of that certain responsibility... and after a while they just think it's too late. The damage is done. (Which incidently is the way many of us think about walking into class 5 minutes late.)

I realized that I have a responsibility that I haven't taken care of yet. It's in Berkeley, but I can deal with it here. And well, even though you might think it... it's never too late.

I never forgave myself for what happened. For punishing myself everytime I met a boy who wouldn't love me back. For the night I spent wondering what the tiling would look like red. For giving in and giving up, I never did. But you can't forgive someone who never apologized. So I guess what I'm trying to say... is sorry.

I'm sorry I let it get so bad. I'm sorry for blaming myself for everything that went wrong. I'm sorry that I said I deserved it, and that I would never be happy. And I promise that in the future, I will take my feelings more into consideration.