#sometimes i feel glad of this space

I’ve always wanted to study abroad, but recently I feel as though it has become clear where I would want to study. I don’t particularly enjoy indulging my emotions, they’re a key part of being but I find my reaction to them ought to be controlled. However, recently I’ve read Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson and it has really made me think. While I have no idea what it is like to be a black body in modern britain, there’s a particular passage that strikes me daily

“She’s beautiful. Want my advice? Find a place you can call home. This isn’t it. It’s hard to just be in this place. So much goes on you don’t even realize until you realize, you know what I mean? Go somewhere you can be free. Where you don’t have to think too rough about what you do before you do it. Find a place you can call home.”(113)

I don’t know what it is like to be a black body in modern Britain, I do know what it’s like to be an Asian man in Western Europe. The sentiment clings to my skin and I cannot seem to scrub it off. My feelings about my own existence, how it’s viewed by others, never has it been said with such candor and clarity. I know the form of limited freedom I posses, in many ways more than others share but in other ways I don’t believe I’ve ever had the freedom to exist. What must it be like to not be a permanent ‘Other’? To find oneself submerged within a crowd?

I’ve always vaguely fancied studying in South Korea, I settled for something in Europe, something closer. The longer passes since I finished Open Water the more I find myself drawn to Asia, to the idea of being free in a country. Being truly free. I’m drawing up a plan to turn a fancy into my concrete reality. It’s utterly terrifying to my bone, but I think that’s the nature of change. It’s confirming the fact that I need this, to be so utterly scared of acting means that I am terrified to the bone of not acting.