"Concept" Internet Cafe

Right now I am sitting in an internet cafe in Taipei.....a very strange experience. It's incredibly smoky in here, since everyone smokes like there is no tomorrow, and I am writing Ivy's statement of purpose for her college application.

Hmm.

On the bus ride over here, I was feeling incredibly depressed--I have been feeling this way for quite a while. Really, I am so surprised that I could feel this horrible when I am at home.

Perhaps that is exactly it. I feel like I am forced to face the fact that I am no longer a child but an adult. (You would think that I know that already.) Certainly I know that as a fact, but to feel it......it's another story. Somehow, I feel so helpless and depressed witht the thought that, "gosh, I am really on my own now."

Before, I could always sort of think of that as a result of being in the US. I have been living on my own since I was 18, in a foreign country, no less. But, deep down, I have always felt that I had somewhere to go back to, and I would no longer need to be so strong.

That thought was extremely comforting.

And right now, it is being taken away from me, even though it is nothing but a new awareness. It has been so for a long, long time, and I perhaps just didn't think of it that way.

I am on my own, and that scares the shit out of me. My loved ones are not only far away from me, they are also only human. Those that I look up to are growing old, and one day they are going to die, just like one day I am going to die as well.

Yalom would probably call this the inevitably existantial truth: the death anxiety.

Well, I am very anxious. And I am very sad.

Why are we here? What is the purpose of life?