The In-betweens

Today is moving out day in the International House.

All foreign students are only allowed to stay for a maximum of six months to give chance to the incoming students to enjoy the convenience of not having to worry about looking for a place to stay the moment they arrive in Japan.

The otherwise, typically quiet corridors were filled with noise very early this morning. If it were not for the fact that I am quite familiar with this noise--- the packing and unpacking, the screeching of tapes being teared and of things being moved--- I would have been doubly astounded by the realization that as one moves forward in life, he/she does not actually become immuned to the pang of emotions everytime change is about to come, most especially if that change entails mobility and constancy, or in a concept that is more concrete to all of us, of leaving and of being left.

I believe that we all move from one monotony to another. And, in between these monotonies are spontaneous moments which often require us to deviate from our routines and our comfort zones. And, no matter how we all love the thrill and the excitement of these spontaneous in-betweens, we would always long for what is comfortable and what is familiar. Or, that might be true for me at least. Personally, as I age, I find it more and more difficult to let go of one monotony and embrace another. Or more appropriately, it's the in-betweens that I dread. This is the reason why this scholarship made me happy and frightened at the same time. This was the reason why I was bawling like an eight year old kid the day I left for Japan, and even at the very last minute in the airport, I was still debating whether to go or not.

"But, this is not your first time. You left for several times already," Sendico reminded me. This is the irony of change and of mobility, of leaving and of being left behind---- you never get used to it, you just never. The more you go through these in-betweens the more it gets difficult because you develop a firmer grasp and understanding of yes, the glory of the thrill, but oftentimes, the loneliness of adapting.

The loneliness of adapting, can be totally surreal. I can make a long list of what I have to learn and unlearn, including the adjustments that I have to make, add to that the crying episodes in between--- half of them may be rightfully blamed to hormones and half of them, well,  due to nostalgia of the monotony which I left. But when I talk about the surreality of the loneliness of adapting, one picture is very clear in my memory---- it was during my first night in the International House and I found out that my laptop couldn't connect to the internet via LAN and, there were no more shops that were open where I could purchase a router. I had to inform the people back home that I arrived safely and there was no other way but to settle with a long distance call via a payphone in the empty lounge of the dormitory. There I was, like I was in an old sad movie about immigrants, scrambling for their coins just to stretch the time of conversation with those on the other end. And, when all the change have been spent, the beeping, mechanical sound from the phone adds to the surreality of it all by reverberating in the empty hall, making it one of the saddest sounds ever created. And then, silence.

Yet, it gets better.

Yes, it does get better. New routines are established, although once in a while, I'd still get a pang of emotions pertaining to adapting. I have always been good at adapting. I don't have any special skills and abilities but I am always proud of the fact that one  can put me anywhere and I'll adapt, thrive even.

So, this morning, the otherwise eternal silence of the whole International House was broken by noise of all sorts, a noise I'm quite familiar with--- the noise of the in-between. So this explains the unusual stab of nostalgia I felt when people in our floor (which included me) started going from one room to another to say our goodbyes while some chatted for a while as if we were good old friends----unusual because on normal days, we would only exchange hellos or nods on the corridors and only those. However, despite the fact that I don't know these people personally as much as they don't know me, but the knowledge of their quiet presence in the other rooms had been my comfort and monotony in the past six months. And, from the atmosphere awhile ago, I sensed that it had been theirs as well.

So, this deviation was a sign of the start of another brief in-between, and although I no longer care that much for these episodes, there is comfort in knowing what is next after this brief interlude.