Addiction

I was on my way out to grab lunch today. And three classmates asked me if I’d like to join their lunch.

‘Yeah, sure.‘ I looked at the smiley girl.

But half way through I felt awkward, they were asking me about the elite schools I went to, and people that I knew. A girl was saying that she had a high school friend who went to my department and got dropped out.

“Oh yeah, I remember him. He was struggling with his relationships I think. Are you a good friend of his”

“Yeah we’re good friends.” She smiled and confirmed.

Then I started to feel alerted and said I need to leave to meet another friend. Sorry that I couldn’t join them.

But the real reason was — — on hearing this guy made me wince back — — oh my goodness, he and all other people in my department made suffer so much during my college years, on judging my figure, on my gender-equal way of approaching, and my authentic English ‘because your family was rich so you could go to the US’ all the while complaining that the society and professors were treating them poorly— — oh my goodness. I cannot imagine anyone being friends with these guys. They conjure up, later, as the “Successful people” in Taiwan. And that pulled me desparately out of the land.

On hearing his name, I got panicked and saddened greatly. And yet it was almost 10 years ago. I burst out crying on my way home, and I listened to “Sky Full of Songs” by Florence and the Machine over and over again, until I made a rough roadmap for my next year to be a software engineer in Berlin/Boston/EU.

Simple as it is. These guys did push me out of Taiwan, to reach a greater version of me. Thanks you, but Fuck you very much as well.