After College

Secrets

Can I tell you a secret?

I hear that question often. I'm not sure why everyone likes to spill all of their darkest thoughts or concerns to me. I'm like a grey plastic bucket tossed at the side of the road, collecting rain water from a leaky pipe. I'm just staying there and watching with a little question in my mind. When will someone listen to my secrets?

A pastor or a priest perhaps. I think in this world, only the pastors or priests that I've confessed to understand me. I say pastors or priests because I don't bind myself to a specific Church. There's always the chance that the pastor or priest will see you and get to know you better. I can't have them understand everything, so I venture to different ones in the world and slowly confess my sins.

Father, Forgive me for I have sinned. My last confession was _ and these are my sins.

And every time, I am forgiven. No one judges what I have done. I just confess and cleanse my soul. I have been wandering all over the world, hoping to forget and to find my place in society. However, the more I roam, the more unsettled I become. I simply can't stay somewhere for too long because then I'll get homesick and I'll want to come back home.

But . . . there is no spot for me at home. It's not that my parents hate me or are strict towards me. Though my parents were busy building their Chinese fast food restaurant empire, they still did their best to look after me. I never hated them for leaving my older sister, Alexandra, and me home alone. I knew that what my parents did, they were doing it for the family. Alexandra was always caring and responsible; she acted more like my mother and since she was nine years older than me, she always gave me advice. I tagged along behind her whenever I could or I would drag Gabriel, who lived next door, to play with me. What happened more often was that my sister would bring Gabriel and me along to her social events and everyone would comment on how cute Gabriel and I were. Alexandra even took me to her dates with her boyfriends and they treated me like their own little sister.

As for my job, I'm a freelance journalist. Cool sounding right? It's really just a fancy word in my books for "more or less unemployed". Unemployment isn't a concern of mine when I have been fortunate enough to be born in a loving family that never lacked money. We just lacked time to be together. When my parents' business became more stable and they themselves were much older, they started to care more about family gatherings. Having a very elaborate dinner for Chinese New Year where everyone would congregate became even more important than Christmas. As for me, when I got older, I just wanted to stay away from these gatherings.

This morning I got a call from Alexandra, urging that I come back home for Chinese New Year. She said that everyone in the family, besides me, would be there. If everyone was there, then that would mean . . . A flash of his smile whizzes by in my head. His deep dimples set in as he calls out my name.

I shake my head a few times and remind myself that I need to start typing my new blog post. A few years ago, I started a travel blog for fun and somehow that slowly grew in popularity. A few hits per post turned into thousands and now hundreds of thousands. I never reveal my face in my photos or state my real name, yet people like to read my deepest thoughts. In fact, even my family has no idea that this blog exists. They all think that I just write articles for some websites or journals from time to time and I never care to explain what I do. They don't need to understand nor do they care to understand. I should have been a doctor anyway or at least a teacher. A freelancer just sounds . . . unstable.

I admit that I'm a bit cheesy because I'm pretending to be a hipster. I'm at a semi-touristy café in Paris with an overpriced coffee resting to the right of my hand and a laptop in front of me. My table is also outside, so that I can try people watching. I'm just missing a cigarette; though I do smoke, I don't like to smoke while drinking coffee. There's too much bitterness in a go and so I order a chocolate croissant, giving that bitter coffee a good balance. See, I look the part of an artist but I definitely lack that creativity.