Vagabond Multilingual Journal Spring 2014 | Page 30

At one point, I dripped into the memory of walking out of the Catholic boarding house-the family that adopted me and friends I had left behind in Europe. Feelings of isolation kept
filling me with their weight, dense and warm in silence. I had a pleasant childhood in the
boarding house, but at the same time I felt abandoned by my parents. Often, I was consumed
by pain and resentful feelings of those who left me behind, observing and witnessing me when
no one cared. I was all alone. In the desert of the silence, I listened to echoes of the years I
spent in Europe. Stretching in my mind shades of those memories overlapped and unfolded
like a drama. I daydreamed, drunk by anguish. I listened to nostalgic visions. Sometimes my
daydreams were simply mere daydreams.
My choice had become my sin. I yearned for love and for a gentle acceptance -- Acceptance
that I could value. I was a runaway in a romance with adventure and bright light. My
first years on the run were an agony of homesickness, nostalgia, guilt, sorrow, vague fears of
emptiness, of being lonely and feeling emotionally fragile.
I never set out to make friends. I did not object to making friends. But I wasn’t trying
for any. I just pretended that someday I would meet a friend who would say, I want to know
you -- your strengths and your faults. And I will accept you anyway.
Rose was a sophomore in college. She was tall, thin and pretty. She had strawberry
blond hair and a translucent peach skin. She was a greatly desirable person, with a great
ability to make friends.
Rose and I met by chance. We were strangers, each carrying a mystery within us -the unknowable mystery of our feelings of the heart and of being. But she liked me. My
overwhelming emotion at that point was only respect, which eventually melted into genuine
love.

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