We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.

Jane Austen, “Persuasion”

I don’t know why every country is bringing out a new trilogy from me.

In part 1, I…

• Return to Israel after fourteen months of travelling
• Come out to my family
• Discover that unrequited love has scarred my body for life
• Condemn people who disappear instead of apologizing
• Fight with my family and former best friend
• Crack under constant criticism and pressure from every single Israeli around me
• Lose my peace of mind to uncontrollable longing
• Get asked to be in a long-distance relationship
• Realize all my relationships are asymmetrical
• Re-assimilate into Israel, forget about Asia, and conclude how these places differ
• Succumb to the finality of lost love

8 April 2024

Back to Israel

I landed in Israel at 6:30 AM and took the train from the airport. My mom picked me up from the train station. She was already crying.

It felt as if no time had passed. We’d seen each other a few days ago, hadn’t we? Not fourteen months.

Breakfast at the café near her apartment included chocolate milk (my first choice of drink in Israel) and a pineapple cake from Taiwan.

“Don’t leave your belongings inside the car,” my mom reminded me when we parked. She added that she’d never seen me so radiant and glowing.

“This trip was the first time I felt happy,” I said, now in tears like her. “The first time I felt like I was home.”

Then we bought a transistor radio and an emergency lamp. Two days ago, the Israeli government had advised all citizens to prepare their safe rooms for an escalation in the war.

Moving into my mom’s new apartment felt like invading a stranger’s home. I’d gotten used to sleeping on the floor in dirty dorms.

Fearing that I had bug bites, I washed all my clothes. The stamp of the techno club in Taipei I’d gone out to on my last night in Taiwan came off in the shower.

The phone was ringing off the hook. Family members and my mom’s friends bombarded me with questions. For some reason, they all wanted to know if, while traveling, I had also dated.

I had never dated in Israel, nor discussed this with them.

All my life, the prospect of coming out to my family had given me so much anxiety, especially after my cousin had done so in the most dramatic way possible, that I’d foreseen myself trembling with dread when the time came. After my second cousin had come out in the most elegant way possible, I had decided to follow her suit, and wait for the day I would have a relationship to share.

My twin brother stopped by for lunch. He immediately criticized my appearance, and never once smiled or said something nice. He complained about the food and yelled at our mom for worrying about my safety. Then he left with containers full of leftovers.

Coming Out

In the afternoon, I continued to recount my trip to mom. She got very upset when I confessed how lack of money had led to more stress than three full meals a day.

“Did you date anyone?” she then asked.

Half a day in Israel, and how many times had I gotten this question? I’d avoided it on the phone, but now, the timing felt right.

“I had something going on,” I began, “but not with a girl –”

“With a guy,” she interjected.

“Yes,” I said. We were both calm, matter-of-fact. I wasn’t nervous in the slightest.

“I’m not surprised,” she said. Neither a smile, nor a frown. A completely mundane remark.

I immediately started divulging everything. It felt like talking to friends from Asia who didn’t judge me. Until she asked me to stop, because it was “too much to take in”. 

My coming out went 100% according to my fantasy. No big deal, no big reaction, told only when I had something concrete.

Then my mom said, “Don’t tell anyone else.”

She claimed she didn’t want people to gossip. I had no problem with anyone knowing, but acquiesced.  

I slept on my new, divinely firm bed. Yet I would pick old hostels in a heartbeat, if it meant returning to the Far East. To traveling and living on my own, instead of being watched by my family.

13 April 2024

Constant Pressure

Three days in Israel had drained me. Family, friends, and strangers in this country were all in each other’s business. Calling every hour, asking what I’d been doing. I hadn’t had a moment to myself.

Every single person I knew here was a pragmatist. The stereotype about Jewish people being business-savvy was true. Daily conversations in Israel revolved around work and war. Instead of asking about my trip, everyone had just been commenting on my appearance (hair, weight loss), lecturing me about the war, and inquiring about my future.

“What will you do with your life? How will you pay for it?”

“What did you eat today? You haven’t eaten anything!”

“What are you wearing? It looks weird.”

I had returned to Israel eager to share everything that had happened to me. Yet no one wanted to hear. “It’s too much to process,” some had said.

Instead, the only things I’d been doing since landing were: talk to overbearing family members almost 24/7; organize mom’s new apartment, which no one had deigned to do in the full year since her relocation; and run errands, such as doctor appointments. I met a friend for one brief afternoon, my childhood best friend, who I’d known since first grade and come out to before anyone else.

My second morning in Israel had involved a visit to a dermatologist. My bug bites had turned out to be a chronic skin disease. It had erupted on my last week in Korea, after experiencing my first heartbreak and stressing over lack of budget. I had cried myself to sleep over a human for the first time, stayed in bed for three days, and spurned full meals. That incident had scarred my skin.

Moreover, my orthodontic retainer had come off on my last day in Taiwan, and now I couldn’t replace it.

The Ghosthunter

But the icing on the top was the silence from the East. Every day, every night, I’d been ruminating on someone who wasn’t there.

And it killed me. Because a ghost had built a permanent base in my brain. Instead of talking to myself or my characters, I conversed with an absentee. I had lost sight of my biggest dream in life, and wrote silly love poems every day.

Worst was how that ghost was in plural. They left no room in my train of thought for any other passenger. When I chatted with my family, I was already telling this in my head to someone who didn’t care.

My heart was still in Asia. It had taken a drastic departure from my life there to make me realize that I had learned how to love. The Israeli dating pool, in contrast, seemed as miniscule as I’d remembered, rife with toxic masculinity. Before my trip, it had led me to write the following. 

I reluctantly identify as aromantic. I’ve never had romantic feelings for anyone, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have. Why? Maybe my brain is wired differently. I want to fall in love, simply to understand what all the fuss is about – but if there is such a thing as true love, I doubt I’ll be able to find it by dating. If the first time I met someone was on a date, I might start to think of them as a potential partner; I would see them in a certain way, which I wouldn’t have under different circumstances. (Like Charlottle from Sex and the City.) For me, true love must blossom organically. First you get the know the person, and only later realise you want to be with them. I think Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816) are the greatest love stories ever told because of that.

“Fun Facts About Me That Start Quirky and Hopefully Endearing, but Become Increasingly Weird and Personal / 癖のあって、うまくいけば愛らしいものから始まるけど、ますます奇妙で個人的なものになる、俺に関する面白い事実” (22 January 2023)

I had finally found Pandora’s Box. Inside was a love potion that had melted my insides.

The world was a global village. I envied everyone I knew who took advantage of this to still be friends with their exes. In the past decade since high school, I’d been ghosted so many times – by friends, dates, literary agents, and bosses – that I could no longer tell if I loved ghosts, or if I was one.

In the absence of communication, no one could admit to any hurt. It was easier to disappear than apologize for breaking one’s promises.

It killed me how I had to stay quiet and distant and pretend that everything was okay.

Love had blinded me into knocking on shut doors. I’d been repeating this mistake even with people I had thought were my friend. But good relationships, any sort of relationships, were a two-way street whose cars met halfway through. I wished I could be loved as much as I loved.

Why do some people have callous-unemotional traits and lack basic empathy? Is it that difficult to think about someone other than yourself? Do I sound haughty for asking this? Jessica Benjamin was right, intersubjectivity is the only way to for us to live in peace, but I know too many people who never deign to ask how someone is doing. Why can we build architectural wonders but also act so barbaric?

“Life is Beautiful and Ugly / 人生は美しくて醜い” (12 February 2023)

Iran Attacks Israel

Every day, I’d been going to bed at 2:00. Only the small hours of the night offered me reprieve and quiet. Songs about heartbreak and an extra pillow had replaced reading.

I was lurking in the shadows, like a ghosthunter stuck in the land of the living. Suddenly, I understood how Deckard from Blade Runner (1982) felt.

Tonight, however, Iran launched missiles at Israel.

It was first attack of its kind in history. No one knew what to expect. I barricaded the safe room and turned on the news.

My chest knotted. My heart was somersaulting. It seemed as if there was nothing good about life in Israel. I couldn’t live in anxiety and constant pressure from everyone around me.

The first day, talking pleasantly with mom about personal experiences and enjoying her understanding, I’d felt good about my return. That things wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared. Now, they had already deteriorated. In a few days, my skin had worsened more than it had in the Far East.

At 3 AM, I tried to fall asleep. The missiles were scheduled to reach Israel in a few hours. An even worse war was looming, and what was my brain chewing? If any of the people I missed from my trip would think about me.

I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d wake tomorrow to missile alarms and text messages. The latter already seemed out of the question. They didn’t care about me – they didn’t think about me – I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

I deserved the first option simply as punishment for this speculation. This war was killing people left and right, while I was safe and sound.

23 April 2024

From the Honeymoon Phase to Passover

The honeymoon phase was over. Mom had been yelling at me every day. I’d forgotten how all my family had a short temper.

Yesterday was Passover Eve, my most hated day of the year. I’d visited dad and grandma for the first time since returning. Like my brother, they’d barely smiled or expressed any enthusiasm. Dad said hi and then moved on to some crumbs on a carpet. He, my grandma, and my older half-brother had focused about my need to find a job.

Then, during Passover dinner with mom and family friends, we read the Haggadah. More disapproval of my weight loss.

“You need to EAT!”

Fight with a Friend

The next day, I had a fight with my former best friend.

We’d been friends for nine years, ever since uni. I had too many fond memories. But she often criticized me and yelled at me, just like my family.

During my first three months in Japan, she’d done this every time I had called, instead of letting me enjoy my trip. Then she’d ghosted me.

When I had moved to Korea in May 2023, it had come to light that she’d been reading every post on my blog. I couldn’t forgive her for hearing about all the danger and heartbreak I’d found myself in, yet never once texting me. As if we were strangers.

So we had shouted at each other in Seoul at 1 AM for two hours, while I was sitting on a pavement outside my hostel, in a quiet street near Dongmyo. I’d apologized fifty times for making her feel unloved. When I’d asked if she was sorry as well, she’d laughed.

A year later, she’d found out I was back in Israel an hour after I’d posted about it online. She called to say she’d been missing me every day since.

“How should I know that?” I asked. “You never said so.”

Nor had she addressed our quarrels.

“That whole conversation was a blur,” she said. “I didn’t know what you were saying, you were accusing me of so many things I’ve never heard of, I didn’t know what was happening.”

“But you never brought it up again, asking what I meant, what I was feeling, why I asked if you were sorry.”

“You accused me of not being a friend to you and doing bad things,” she said, “but none of them were true.”

I reminded her how she had castigated me and shouted in each of our interactions.

“I don’t remember any fights apart from that one in May,” she said.

I gave her multiple examples. We began to lose our composure. Things were yelled.

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” I interjected at some point.

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t start another argument with her. That I wouldn’t apologize again until she did. But she just stayed quiet. Like in May.

A word here and there. Long stretches of silence.

I apologized with gritted teeth. She started to cry. I felt bad about the whole situation.

“I never stopped loving you,” she said. “I never in a million years thought I’d lose you. I think about you every single day.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” I said. “Didn’t you also feel bad?”

She played innocent.

“I want to salvage this,” she insisted. It pained me to tell her that I didn’t.

“You think I haven’t thought of you this past year?” I said. “I didn’t just forget nine years of friendship.”

But I didn’t want to go back. Our phone call at present was a frustrating recreation of the one in May.

“I want to make it very clear that this is your decision,” she said. “To end this friendship.”

It was my decision to stop being friends – but I felt like she wasn’t acting like a friend.

“I don’t feel like anything’s changed,” I explained. “If this is how we talk now, it’s all the same.”

“As if you haven’t lived a lifetime since then,” she muttered.

I realized she’d read a lot about me. It felt very one-sided.

“I don’t like the way things turned out,” I said. “I feel bad.”

She stayed quiet.

“I can’t hang up,” she finally said. “I can’t let go of you.”

“Me neither,” I said. It was difficult for me as well.

Despite everything, I didn’t think about her as a bad person, and wished her all the best.

It felt bonkers to me how nothing in Israel had changed. I’d grown into a different person, while the country and its people had stayed the same. War would always rage here; Israelis would always judge, fight, and clamor.

I didn’t want to find myself in endless cycles. Every generation in my family suffered from them. Ghosts were frozen in time; the one who wrote about them ought to grow instead.

I could write a hundred pages listing every difference between the two counties. It had taken me five months in Japan to realize all of these came down to one thing, and one thing only. Japanese people apologized on a regular basis. For every tiny thing. Even when it wasn’t their fault.

Israeli people, on the other hand, yelled more than they apologized.

This, in my opinion, was the single most important quality a person could possess. I had lost touch with too many people who’d never admitted to being in the wrong.

How could one piece of land hold such seasonal beauty and societal comfort, whereas another, on the very same planet, strife and war? Protests where police officers beat civilians opposed to a government’s new, anti-democratic laws? Terrorists murdering left and right out of nowhere while people were resting early morning on a weekend and celebrating a holiday?

“Tel Aviv in Hokkaido, Massacre in Israel / 北海道でテルアビブ、イスラエルで虐殺” (7 October 2023)

People would never be sorry if they never erred.

27 April 2024

Coming Out, Yet Again

My sister landed from Cyprus today. I came out to her. No big reaction. A calm and deadpan conversation.

“I found your blog,” she said. “I already read about it. And cried.”

My trauma had brought her to tears. But she didn’t ask if I was okay.

When I started divulging my love life to her, she stopped me.

“Too much information.”

Everywhere I went in Israel, I was surrounded by straight couples. Most Israelis discussed homosexuality with a slightly uncomfortable tone, even if they weren’t homophobic.

If the people close to me didn’t want to hear about those once closer to me – where could I channel all my longing to? I wanted to write my love on the sky, but they’d just look away. Everyone except the writer knew when a chapter was over.

Poems were my only refuge. No matter the strife, no matter the continent. Earth was a haunted mansion, and I believed in ghosts now – I was falling in love with them.

Three times in seven months, once in each country, the night had grown stormy. A spectre had knocked on my door. They had cast a spell on me when I had least expected it. I was in tears before dawn.

I was an open book with them. I had never felt this way before. They had read between my lines and then floated away. Two of them, to avoid pain; the third, to enact revenge.

And it worked. I couldn’t move on. Not from chance encounters that had felt like destiny, and ended in nothingness.

How were other people able to get rid of their demons?

I wanted my peace of mind back. Love had taken over my brain, even when I didn’t want it to, even when it was bringing me pain. I’d never enjoyed full ownership of the pen that wrote my life. But to lose control of the wheel that steered my train of thought – that was the final nail in my agency’s coffin.

“The ego is not a master in its own home,” Frued had said. I was powerless, impotent, consumed by pining. A discarded toy in a safe room, where I wrote while snacking on matzah.

2 May 2024

Fight with My Family

This morning, I finally exploded. Three weeks in Israel, less than a week with my sister around, and I screamed myself hoarse and shook with rage from all the relentless judgment and pressure and criticism.

I’d forgotten in the Far East what it was like to have altercations. Only with the Italian volunteer in the Taiwanese monastery had it happened. One time in fourteen months.

In Israel, every day was like this.

Phone calls every ten minutes – telling me to do something, then yelling at me for following instructions – babying me and bossing me around –

“Don’t leave crumbs on the table” (I didn’t) “Don’t leave the window open” “Don’t touch the fridge with your fingerprints” (I didn’t) “You broke the sink” “You broke the vase” (I didn’t) “You didn’t fold my laundry” (not my responsibility) “Write my paper for uni”

When was the last time I had screamed myself hoarse? Before my trip, when I’d stormed out of home and mom had called the police to look for me.

Being the only introvert in a family of extroverts – the only “arts and humanities” sheep in a pack of doctors, engineers, and lawyers – the only one left-handed, the only one drawn to Asian cultures – all of this had depleted my social battery, and I hadn’t even begun working yet. I was boiling inside a pressure pot in Big Brother’s kitchen.

I stopped sharing my private life with my family.

Asians and Long-Distance Relationships

In the afternoon, I received a text message from Korea.

“I’m trying not to forget her voice,” a friend said about his ex. “I miss her smile, I miss her so much, I can’t sleep at night.”

In the evening, I received a phone call from Taiwan.

“I want to be yours,” I was told. “I want you to be mine. I want to be your only one.”

An offer was made: a long-distance relationship.

I was speechless. This was an ongoing issue during my trip, which the distance had again and again killed. In October, I’d even asked someone for such a relationship.

Just like the response I’d gotten in autumn, I found myself saying a painful “No”.

In the past few days, I’d been reminding myself of life-changing dates in Asia that no longer rose on their own. Was it because my mind was completely absorbed in my writing these days? Or was the distance at fault?

I was even starting to hate the ghosts.

Being forced to quit dating in Israel after all the love that I had experienced in the Far East felt miserably appropriate. Perhaps I needed a break.

Dinner was with my sister and her friends from our high school. It felt so good to reunite with everyone, as if no time had passed. Yet hints of wrinkles were crowning some of their mouths. Maybe mine as well.

My time on this Earth was limited. I despised how some people had played games with me and wasted it.

6 May 2024

The Cultural Values of Israel

Today was Holocaust Memorial Day. It felt more surreal than previous years, because the deadliest massacre of Jews since World War 2 had occurred in October.

This past month, in my spare time, I’d been watching the news about the ongoing war and documentaries about the massacre. Sometimes I would hear the explosions of intercepted missiles.  

Today, for example, I watched testimonies by Holocaust survivors, and cooked a Korean lunch.

In the absence of any occurrences in my personal life – anything interesting about my new routine – I did a lot of thinking. I overthought more than usual. This had led to the realization that all my relationships were asymmetrical. Was it possible to find someone who missed me as much as I missed them?

Re-assimilating into Israeli society after growing accustomed to the Far East had also led to some conclusions.  

In Japan, the biggest value was respect, followed by caution and individualism. Communication ought to be courteous, ergo boundaries could not be broken.

In South Korea, the biggest value was convenience, followed by beauty and strength. Everything ought to operate in the most efficient manner and look its best.

In Taiwan, the biggest value was hospitality, followed by boldness and consequentialism. Good outcomes justified inconvenient or dangerous methods.

In all three countries, the fourth biggest value was self-exertion: doing your best and giving your all.

It had taken me a year in the Far East – the polar opposite to the Middle East – to recognize the biggest value in my homeland, Israel.

Survival.

More than two thousand years of persecution had forced Jews to dedicate all their thoughts and efforts to it. It had dictated every aspect of their lives. Even religious practices, such as Shabbat (a weekly day of rest) and frequent hand washing, contributed to it.

This finally explained why almost every Israeli I knew was pragmatic to the core. They were too busy worrying about tomorrow to adopt a carefree, live-in-the-moment attitude. Those who broke the mould did so temporarily, such as while traveling in India or South America; not lifelong.

Of course, there were also those who lusted after money out of greed alone.

But this also explained why Israel had been spearheading innovations in engineering, security, combat, or even water purification (due to frequent water crises). Life here was so arduous, full of daily conflicts, that Jews had no choice but to rise to the task.

I couldn’t say that I appreciated this value. It stemmed from religious extremity (it took two intransigents for a 2,000-year-old conflict), and overruled other values, such as respect.

Nor did I appreciate the second most important value, Judaism, which dictated lifestyle and politics in Israel, or the local invasiveness, whether into the West Bank, or into each other’s pocket, plate, body, and pants. People openly discussed money, criticized my eating habits and appearance, and inquired after my dating life.

But they also attended memorials of strangers and protested for the return of hostages.

Privacy was extreme in Japan, and non-existent in Israel. Japanese people never asked questions. Israeli people meddled in your affairs, but also showed support to complete strangers. Friends and family rarely gave me that support. But when Hamas had kidnapped an Israeli soldier for five years in 2006, the entire country had rallied to bring him back, and released one thousand terrorists as part of a prisoner exchange.

I disliked how Israelis criticized everything, even when it wasn’t their business. But I loved how they could discuss everything out in the open.

The sense of community here was unparalleled. Israel was tight-knit and warm. This was both good and bad. Direct communication was a plus Asians would never offer me; respectful communication was a plus Israelis would never, either. Moreover, “It is good to die for our country” was one of the most famous phrases.

The fourth value I’d noticed was pluralism. The melting pot policy of the 1950s, during which Jews from the diaspora had immigrated to the new state of Israel, had created such a diverse society, that there was no such thing as an Israeli face. Everyone I had met while traveling had assumed it existed and belonged to me – a seemingly white European, with roots in Israel that went back at least seven generations – yet Ashkenazi (European) Jews were actually the ethnical minority, compared to Mizrahi (Easterners) and Hispanics.

This multi-culturalism had led to various languages and cuisines, yet also to insurmountable disagreements among voting citizens that had destroyed local politics.

The End of Love

This past month, I’d begun going over my posts from my trip. It felt baffling to read the incidents that had changed me. A lot of new insight lately into Israel and my life here versus in Asia.

Yet I couldn’t bear to read my trysts. Those three times I had fallen in love and ended in tears. I winced whenever I recalled them now.

“Don’t,” I would shake my head, and force myself to think about something else.

Never say something you didn’t mean to someone who breathed words. I wished I could stop the movie in my head.

Late at night, I went to bed. The window was letting in cool air. I watched the city and listened to crickets. Tears gushed out for the first time since my return to Israel.

Had I made love up? Straddled fact and fiction?

Alone in my dark bedroom, I shed all pretence. I wished I could rewind my watch. I wished I could rewrite the end of this chapter.