As I am writing at a new cosy spot I found on campus, my sentiments towards Trinity and Dublin have been very neutral. My previous anger disappears, and my relocation to Flanders seems a bit burdensome. In the past weeks or months, I have been subletting my flat here in Dublin, finding a new one in Flanders, registering social events in the host university, trying to rent a bike and so on. At some point, I wished the Belgium Embassy reject my visa so that I had no choice but to stay in Dublin and Trinity, which again, I have no resentment towards now.
“It’s just the moving anxiety you have at the moment”, friend E said, “once you are in Belgium and your old familiar place, you will feel so much better”. I believe that and appreciate friends’ encouraging words when I meet them for coffee or food nowadays to see me before my leave. When I was laundering and sorting out my clothes last Thursday on a sunny, windy day, I realised that I had so much stuff during the past three years or technically two years in this flat that I have it all on my own. The subtenant agreed to my requirement to store some personal belongings in one layer of the closet which I can barely fit 2/3 of my clothes.
When the clothes, books, documents, and different flavours of shampoos scatter in the tiny flat, I deeply understand the English phrase “all over the place”. Friend JR moved out of Dublin this past May and I sort of witnessed his struggle when packing, organising his research stay in New York City. Luckily he has his parents’ house in the European Continent to send packages to, but he was the rare creature who expressed the same feeling that I am experiencing: “Everyone says moving and experiencing are always good, and those ‘once you are there’ comment never worked on me.” Me neither. But I have to keep positive, at least in front of my friends who are still bravely living here. I am a bit sick of me not being happy anyway – not happy living in Dublin, not happy moving out of Dublin.
Such is the theme in my past. Three best coastal cities (Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shanghai) in Eastern China where I lived, studied, and worked in. I liked them somehow, but I was never happy there. It is not the case with Flanders, Belgium though.
I was approaching my 30s when I decided to wisely use the money I inherited from my grandpa’s passing away. It was not a huge amount of money but enough for a one-year comfortable stay in Europe. Besides, I have long desired an overseas degree as I have been working in international institutions and a foreign degree is more highly valued than my Chinese degrees. The age of 30 seems a big moment for many. My cousin who at that time was 32 got the same amount of money from our grandpa, paid her down payment for a nice flat in city centre Shanghai, got married, and (probably) started a proper adult life. We are not close and never contact each other. The only situation we may see each other annually was the tomb sweeping to the monument place where our same grandparents’ ashes were stored. I miss them very much.
I lived every day in Belgium as if this was my final carnival before real life seriously began. Five years later now, I will be moving to Belgium from Dublin for a research stay next week. I don’t really have much in my hands this time, and I haven’t slept well for a long time. I constantly feel low energy, and I am depressed. I have been reading European colonial history as my research work moves on. I have realised that no matter how many statues of Leopold II were set on fire, the privilege and supremacy of Europeans are prevalent. And after all, I am a foreign student from China.