To avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

Lionel Shriver, “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

In part 3, I…

• Recall my childhood trauma and regain the ability to cry
• Crave symmetry in my platonic and romantic relationships
• Attend Tel Aviv Pride
• Reconnect with childhood friends
• Free myself from the shackles of love
• Balance Israeli and Asian styles of communication
• Dip my toes into the difficult dating scene
• Bid war-torn Israel a premature farewell

But first, here is my summary of each country I lived in or visited for a long time.

• Israel in one word: intense. There is not a single aspect of life in it that isn’t extreme.
• The UK in one word: grey. Both the climate and the people are frigid.
• Japan in one word: individualistic. It clings to its unique identity, and respects personal boundaries.
• South Korea in one word: competitive. It must be the fastest, the prettiest, the strongest, and the most convenient.
• Taiwan in one word: warm. The climate wears you out, while the people buoy you.

Needless to say, these are generalizations.

The other countries I’ve visited – France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Seychelles – were for too short of a time for me to study in an anthropological manner.

31 May 2024

Tears of a Ghost

I was organizing my Coming Out posts as part of this blog’s redesign, when I cried for the first time in weeks.

At first, I found my childhood diaries too whiny. I didn’t feel like I’d been through misfortunes as traumatic as they described.

Then I wondered why I had to write about such anguish to begin with. Homophobia, peer pressure, and fake friends in school had led to self-harm and depression. All my life, I’d felt ugly and alone, misunderstood by everyone around me. My family and friends had all exhibited signs of homophobia.

Growing up in a set of triplets, it was impossible not to compare myself with my siblings. To this day, the three of us all did it. I couldn’t help but wonder why my brother and sister had both managed to meet their best friends in middle school and stay in close touch with them to this day, while my friends had forgotten me after high school, after university, or after traveling together.

I’d always known I was different from every Israeli around me. Was I the problem, or did I simply not match the atmosphere?

The answer to this question mattered little. Why did I have to grow this way? I wondered with fresh tears on my face. I wanted to have friends who would stick by my side through thick and thin, just like my siblings’. Who wouldn’t sleep at night if something happened to me, instead of ignoring it like a stranger. Who would call or text a simple “How are you?” because they cared about my well-being. Who would ask to hang out because they missed me.

God forbid I dared to ask the same from a partner. While my former friends from school had entered relationships and partied, I’d stayed home alone, writing fiction like a banished monster. When I thought about all the years I had wasted by feeling unlovable and heinous, I felt like a failure.

Why did I have to be so different? Why did I have to be born into a society that devalued my skills and passions? I had shared a womb and genes with two siblings who fit like a glove into this reality.

I had stood out in Israel for all the wrong reasons. Only when travelling in the East, did I stand out for all the right.

When I thought about how I’d compensated during my trip and got to experience love, I took pride in my progress. I still had so much to learn. But it didn’t matter at what age I did so, as long as I did. I’d always done things my own way, i.e. in the opposite order. I just wanted to achieve in Tokyo a month from now what my peers had had as teenagers.

Symmetrical relationships. Both platonic and romantic.

I’d been told that I expected too much out of people. I maintained that most people were simply bad friends.

They cared about themselves and turned a blind eye to other people’s emotions. They said things they didn’t mean, broke promises, and vanished.

I wished I could reconnect with my high school friends before I left Israel. But I knew when someone didn’t want me in their life. Invisibility was the worst pain a social creature could fling upon another.

Ironically enough, I was the enviable sibling in school, with the best grades and future prospects. Now my brother earned more money than my parents in a profession that matched his passions, while my sister had received her white coat from medical school yesterday, growing closer to achieving her dream of becoming a doctor. And what was I doing in every minute of my spare time, just like in school? Writing these insignificant posts, as if to a void.

At this rate, I would never fulfil my dream of becoming an author.

Human existence was truly the worst in the animal kingdom. You were gifted self-consciousness – but what you had in mind was squashed by others.

I didn’t know what I would do with myself if my upcoming year in Tokyo would end with me as a thirty-year-old with no work visa, no writing-related job prospects, no progress with my blog, no real friendships, no relationship, and no financial ability to live outside my family’s apartment in Israel. It would kill me so much, that I would fade into a ghost.

6 June 2024

Tel Aviv Pride

Today marked Tel Aviv Pride – one of the biggest in the world. I’d never had the guts to attend it, despite studying at Tel Aviv University and having friends who had. With the confidence and dating experience I’d developed in the East, I’d grown excited at the prospect of finally attending it.

Then the war had cancelled the parade this year.

So instead, there was an assembly in honour of the hostages, with speeches and musical performances.

I took a bus to Tel Aviv. Passengers were talking on the phone; kids were screaming; and a man was singing loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Then I transferred to the new metro. It was such a delicious experience, that it reminded me of Seoul and Taipei. Sleek and quiet, albeit slow.

I arrived at Charles Clore Garden on the promenade. It was a breezy, blue day, with the sun setting over the Mediterranean Sea. People were swimming, sunbathing, running, cycling, playing volleyball, jogging, picnicking, and playing the guitar.

Half of the guys were shirtless. This would never pass in Asia. Even at Seoul Pride, I saw topless women, but not men.

Moreover, I’d never seen so many queer people in Israel. Drag queens; boys in crop tops; trans people; and hand-holding lesbians. After two months of heterosexual family-and-friend-time, I melted at the sight of queer people.

The security here was just as plenty. Tons of soldiers and police officers with dogs and rifles. Some were even riding horses.

The assembly felt like a rave. Attendees were chilling on the lawn or standing in front of the stage, dancing to deafening music. Wearing tank tops or no tops at all. The clothes were colourful, and the pride flags were combined with Israeli flag.

Many couples seemed like twins – either hyper masculine, or hyper feminine. The former was burly, tanned, muscular, and masculine. They had short hair and wore sleeveless T-shirts. The latter was chubby, bearded, hairy, and feminine. They had long hair, sported nail polish, and wore crop tops or skirts.

Finally, there were also those wearing a kippa.

The most famous queer artists in Israel performed. My sister and her friend joined me at some point. The speeches turned religious, with the crowd praying and chanting “amen”. This came after they had booed at a member of the Israeli parliament who had called queer people “the biggest threat to Israel”, worse than Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and any other terrorist organization.

In a religious country that refused to grant queer people equal rights, even Pride was a Jewish event. 

But then the widower of a gay soldier who had died in the war gave a speech that was so tragic, it made him shake uncontrollably. Tears were streaming down his cheeks as his voice was cracking. We shared the same name.

I wriggled out of the crowd and noticed a straight couple canoodling. Even though I’d spent nearly all my life here, I felt more out of place in the Middle East than in the Far East.

The metro back experienced huge delays. The Asian vibe disappeared.

Updated list of things I didn’t miss about Israel:

• Clubbing costs 120~160 shekels (5000~6500 yen) for an entry ticket, which excludes drinks, and 70 shekels (3000 yen) for a drink. Yet the minimum wage is 30 shekels (1200 yen). In Japan, the minimum wage is the same, and an entry ticket (1000 yen) includes a drink. In South Korea, the minimum wage is the same, and most clubs are free to walk in. Only in Taiwan clubs cost 2000~4000 yen.
• Haredi jews who stand at the entrance to shops and supermarkets and ask me to put on tefillin or buy Shabbat candles
• Haredi Jews who try to sell drivers the Old Testament at intersections during a red light
• Homeless people who ask for money on red lights and in restaurants

12 June 2024

Kimchi and Drag Queens in Tel Aviv

Today was Shavuot, my favourite Jewish holiday. My family didn’t do anything religious to celebrate it. Instead, we just ate a lot of cheese.

Fifteen guests had come over last night, so preparations had taken two days. Then, this morning, my best friend in Israel got engaged.

Ten days ago, she had celebrated her birthday at a local bar in town. It was my first time seeing our mutual friends from school since before my trip. It had felt unbelievably great to catch up, as if no time had passed. I wished I could do the same with my other friends from school, outside of this particular friend group.

So tonight, I met another childhood friend in Tel Aviv, from the same group. We had dinner at the only Korean restaurant. The food was overpriced and bad.

Tel Aviv always had that rare combination of “big city” and “chill vibe”. In metropolises like London, Tokyo, or Manhattan, people didn’t walk their dog in shorts and flip flops down the most central and crowded streets. In Tel Aviv, the streets were never that crowded. Girls strutted in bikinis, guys walked shirtless, people smoked on benches, and homeless people begged for money.

A sense of peculiarity accompanied this urban-yet-chill atmosphere. Wherever you went, you could witness something or someone strange.

“Now that I live here,” my friend said as we passed a couple standing on the street and posing as if in a photoshoot yet not snapping any photos, “I never feel weird.”

Israelis simply did not give a damn. They yelled wherever and at whomever they wanted, and wore swimsuits to restaurants. The peripheral areas of this country, where missiles were a daily threat, housed a tamer crowd. Over there, people dressed in a way that didn’t stand out.

“BRING THEM HOME NOW” signs were ubiquitous regardless of the city. The ongoing war had changed Israel forever. Every street, every shop, and every bar featured slogans and pictures of the hostages.

After the lacklustre dinner, my friend and I went to a drag bar for a show.

Israeli drag seemed sloppy, compared to Asian. None of the girls danced or lip synced well. But they were all funny, and the point was to laugh.

Per a Taiwanese friend’s recommendation, I checked out the most famous gay bar in town afterwards. Going out in Israel was exorbitant.

No Longer Haunted by Love

As I returned home from a queer space in Israel for once, it hit me just how much I was no longer in love.

For months, unrequited love had chewed my brain 24/7. I struggled to think about something else; to see myself happy without getting back together.

My longing was no longer intense.

It felt like a demon had lifted its possession over me. A ghost had ceased to haunt me. I was back behind the wheel of my train of thought, and I steered it without depending on someone else’s instructions.  

It felt so refreshing to fall out of love. So sobering and cleansing.

Now, more than ever, I recognised the difference between love and being in love. The former made me care about someone, and tied a fuzzy knot in my chest when they graced my mind. The latter tightened this knot turned all the way into obsession. Being in love made love take over your whole life: every thought, every action revolved around one person. Fuel kindled the knot into burning as intensely as a kiln – until time and distance guzzled all the wood. The flame of love singed for eternity; while the fire of infatuation, so long as it was fed, blazed.

I still loved. I just stopped being in love.

A knot-like load had been taken off my chest. I felt lighter, more focused. I’d matured and wizened, because I’d learned my lesson.   

I didn’t want to fall in love again.

What good would come out of it? I’d had my a fair share of romance. In one year, I’d accumulated enough experience in this realm to engage the writer in me for years. I understood how love worked and what it felt like. And I had no craving at this moment for a second helping. I was full.

It had been exactly two months since my return to Israel. Two months of neither intimacy, nor romance. This was all by choice. I needed to process everything that had happened to me and think how to proceed. Now I knew.

I no longer sought a connection that would wear me down. Love was exhausting. It filled me up, and then emptied me altogether. I didn’t want to find myself re-possessed.

After wondering all my life about the meaning of love, I reached at the age of twenty-nine several conclusions.

I knew what love felt like.

I knew what type of personality I fell in love with.

I knew how the first date needed to unfold for me to fall in love at first sight.

I knew how I reacted to such immediate infatuation.

I knew that only it could lead me to romantic love.

I knew how this love would live and die.

In other words, I had fashioned all the tools necessary to recognize love in real time the next time it happened. Up until this point, it’d always been in retrospect.

But I wouldn’t use this knowledge to fling endless expectations on someone I’d just met.

Someone wise had once told me: “If there is anger, there is love.” I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t desperate. I was just sad.

But I had come to accept it. The fire was doused by water under the bridge. I was out of the woods.

And with that, I decided to not date with the intention of finding something serious. Not if it turned me needy and emotionally starved. I relished this feeling of cleansing too much.

In fact, I felt so relieved, no longer needing an estranged person’s presence, that I didn’t care if our relationship stayed this way. We would never get back together, nor be friends, so what was the point in even sending a message?

At this point, I just wanted a clean slate.

A few weeks ago, I was determined to find a relationship. Now, I realized that it was better to keep expectations low and things light. Emotions had already messed up my life.

16 June 2024

Reading is Fundamental

In the past few weeks, I’d gotten so used to Israel, and to communicating with Israelis, that I’d become even snarkier.

I enjoyed how direct I could be here: honest, playful, sarcastic. Some people, I could tease without worrying about them taking it too seriously. Others, like Asians, couldn’t take the piss out of themselves, and got hurt even by the slightest comment.

I lamented the impending loss of this form of communication. Japanese people didn’t understand sarcasm. They didn’t tease each other. They didn’t even dare utter a small complaint. My best friend in Tokyo, who was totally open with me, always switched to English when making a request, because it felt too weird for him to say in his first language.

In Asia, the importance of respect buried all non-positive sentiments. They were veiled and hinted, never outright expressed. Ergo, passive aggressive.

In Israel, the importance of survival publicized all non-positive sentiments. They were out in the open, even when blunt and rude. Ergo, just aggressive.

The middle ground of these two options – explicit passive aggressiveness – was the golden ratio. When you called someone out in a light-hearted manner, using blatant sarcasm or a humorous tone, your relationship became both fun and honest. Just the latter, and you would constantly criticize each other; just the former, and you would never address your problems.

This third option was the best of both worlds. But it required confidence, maturity, wit, and humour. Most people lacked those. So they would be too offended by this choice.

Drag shows were always fun for me, because drag queens simply called this style of communication “reading”. As the drag documentary Paris is Burning had put it, “reading is fundamental”.

Maybe this explained why a writer like me relished reading. Lately, my sister and I were reading each other every hour of every day, now that she’d returned home from Cyprus. I already worried about losing it in Japan.

Then it hit me. I had already lost it, because I’d won it there. It explained more than anything why I had fallen in love.

29 June 2024

Last Day in Israel

“Are you excited?” everyone around me had been asking.

“No,” I said, just like before my first trip to Japan.

It was clear to all those who knew me that this was my lifelong dream. But I found it too hard to believe.

A relocation so fantastical was supposed to dazzle me. Instead, I worried about money.

And friendships. And dating. And a work visa.

So many things could go wrong, that I wanted my life to stay on pause. But I ought to persist precisely because this big step scared me.

These last few weeks, I’d mostly spent time with friends and family, run errands for Japan, and worked on obtaining a European passport. My best friend and I hung out several times a week in particular. It felt refreshing to have a stable friendship that was close both to my heart and home. We shared everything, and talked all the time.

A part of me wanted to stay in Israel just to hang out with my friend and sister every few days, and have consistent relationships in my life for once. It wasn’t necessarily the case before my trip, nor during, in Japan.

I hoped to find real friends in Tokyo. Long or short distance didn’t matter to me, because technology would allow me to stay in touch with my friends and family. I just wanted to find people who would care about me as much as I cared about them.

Relocating to Tokyo couldn’t have come at a better point. The Far East had handed me romance on a platter; distance had snatched it from my zealous hands. I was anxious to see if settling in one place would improve my dating life.

I did fret about my choice of country, though. Japanese people were experts at ghosting.

Time would tell if my concerns were groundless. As I had learned while traveling for over a year, time and distance were the cornerstones of perspective. Three months in the Middle Eastern antithesis to the Far East – in climate, customs, food, safety, mentality, and convenience – had proved where I belonged, and with whom. Going from dating too much (sometimes, shamefully enough, thrice a day) to not dating at all was such a sharp turn, that it had given me a sharper view of the cars on the road.

I’d been dreading my return to Israel throughout all fourteen months of my trip. But living here again, especially during the worst war in Israeli history, was surprisingly reviving. As if the darkest room in a house contained the light switch to every floor. I had found a way to live without people I had yearned for on a daily basis.

I still felt love. I still recalled. But less and less now. Seasons had passed, and so had my obsession.

My mind had changed in this warzone. My spirit had grown. I felt so liberated, that I found falling out of love more fulfilling than falling in love. The latter always took over my brain, rewrote my thoughts, and dictated my actions. As if I’d become a slave to an oppressor.

I loved being in control. I loved not needing anyone anymore. And I felt more ready than ever for a fresh start.

My only source of lamentation was that I didn’t get to explore the queer dating scene in Tel Aviv more. It had taken me two and a half months to re-enter it. Then the last two weeks, full of relocation errands, passport research, and daily goodbyes from friends and family members, had left me no time to go out and mingle. I’d wanted to put my newfound confidence and social composure to the test in a country where even a bar or a club felt like a battlefield, because everything in Israel, even the dating scene, was militant.

Yet regardless of my limited free time, I still would not have fit in.

Tel Aviv was divided into the two archetypes I’d witnessed at Pride. I belonged to neither. Most locals, who carried the torch of the aggressive-and-insensitive Israeli persona, didn’t care to exchange a single word with me. This wasn’t new. But it reminded me how I stood out here for the wrong reasons.

Those who I did talk to, I couldn’t meet for logistical reasons. As long as I was in Israel, I didn’t enjoy complete freedom.

Perhaps it was no wonder that the only date I’d managed to squeeze was with a Canadian expat who had made Aliyah after high school, and lived within walking distance to me. He also sought someone who spoke about topics other than the gym. It had felt so rejuvenating to go on a date, especially with someone who preferred English to Hebrew and shared my perspective, that I’d bemoaned leaving this country. If I could’ve postpone my relocation, I would’ve add one month of dating, eating out in Tel Aviv, and hanging out with my friends and family.

My best friend couldn’t stop crying at our farewell. I felt numb, because I couldn’t process that this was farewell.

To find people who loved you so much that your absence brought them to tears – this was the epitome of a human being’s social existence.

I ate all my favourite Israeli food on my last day, and already missed Israeli cheese.

My mom and I broke down at the airport. I hadn’t cried a year and a half ago, when we’d said goodbye before my first trip to Japan. But I was no longer the same person.

Since when did I crave more time in my most hated place on Earth?

Crazy how things could change.