Journal Entry 5

Since I got the letter from home, I’ve been thinking a lot about death. It has starts happening whenever I look out the window, whenever I see anything beautiful, like a tree or a blooming flower. I was sitting in the patio of a café when a woman and her young son passed by. The little boy was telling the mother a heart wrenching story about how he lost something or another, and the mother was looking at him with the greatest attention and affection in her eyes. I couldn’t help feeling jealous of the little boy, I wondered why I had never lived moments like that with my own mother, whether that was the reason I was the way I am now, cold and loveless. Will I stay like this until I die? Will our lives be any different, the little boy and mine, will he ever live in the same horrible situation that I am in, even though he has been loved. She did not want me to become this, and yet, I have, whether it be her fault or not. It would be nice to think that this was all the Russian air getting to me, that the minute I go back to Vietnam I’ll go back to “normal”, but it’s too late. The air has already mixed into my blood, gone under my skin and become a part of my being. If only there was a way I could die without having to kill myself, without having to have my family live under the humiliation of their son giving up and leaving everyone behind. More importantly, I wish I had the courage to do it. Every time I walk down the street, I wish a car would hit me, I wish a police officers pistol would accidently go off. I watched a man die for God’s sake, how much closer to dirt do I have to get to before I can actually be buried in it? How many more times do I have to look at the stars before one falls down onto my head and frees me from all of these troubles? Frees me from this horrible thing we call life?

I believe all of this negative energy is coming from the letter that my brother wrote to me, every time he sends me anything he always seems to feel the need to make me feel horrible about myself.

Today I had another class, this time it was Russian history. I left in the middle, I couldn’t take sitting there anymore.

Still no news from Chinh, but I’ve already given up on his enterprise. He tells us he knows what he’s doing, but I don’t believe him. Not that I really believed him in the first place.