just like beer

It's only about a month since I started my new work and only about 2 weeks since I started the second year; yet, it feels like I've been tired all my life. It's only about a month since I returned from my unplanned 2-week trip to California; yet, I long to go back. The trip has been semi-spontaneous (if there's such a word), lacking the precise details and planned itineraries of Orlando vacation packages, but time was well spent nonetheless.

I left home and journeyed a thousand miles with a few cash and a credit card with unsure credit. I got the ticket a day before I left --- a day after Mom left the hospital. I really wanted to run away from all these, albeit only for a short time. It felt like Mom's cancer would already push me to the brink of insanity; my and my family's shoulders are already burdened with heavy crosses that we can hardly bear anymore.

I am very poor in directions, but this time, I traveled alone. There was that sense of carelessness or indifference or boldness that I will go, no matter what. And the land of milk and honey, indeed, coated with sugar the bitterness of my life. The curiosity in the places and the people captured my eyes and my mind. I lost myself in the new things that I was seeing, and coldness that I was feeling, and people I was watching.

But no, I wasn't happy. I was just, for a time, free. I was doing what I wanted and going to places where I wanted. And out of all things, I was not deep in thought on how I, we, would survive.

Just like beer, while you're drinking, you're free. When you stop, all things are there all over again.