3:30 a.m.

Ximen district, Taipei, Taiwan

typically, i am mad at the world if i find myself still awake when i want to be sleeping. i also know i'm supposed to be trying to sleep all night in order to readjust back to MST after 9 days in taiwan. this morning, however, a part of me perversely enjoys being up when everyone else around me is asleep- the downstairs family is finally quiet, their TV silenced; no honking cars outside; i can't even hear the zoo animals from their caged homes 3 blocks down the road. when i'm alone in my apartment at night, i can pretend i am no longer in ABQ, but anywhere in the world. 

the transition back to the U.S. has not been easy, as if i'd been living on the moon for months. i'm heartsick for taipei and wondering why i still live in the U.S., a place where i've rarely felt i belonged, and where Americans have often spoken to me and about me as if i didn't belong. tomorrow i plan to go to the gym (i ate constantly while in taiwan), but i will tread lightly when i enter this large, loud room of sweaty Americans. i will carry myself carefully, no longer desiring to force myself into their world in order to prove that i, too, am American, just like them. though i am U.S.-born, i am starting to accept that i am a foreigner after all, a suspicion that i have fought all my life, but am now relieved to embrace as reality. as a foreigner, i will hold myself inwards and simply observe the people around me, like a watchful child in an unsafe place, eyes and ears big, body made small.