When I say that I study Japanese for 13 years, I don’t often add the most of it was spent in a state of anxiety. I felt like a dead man walking as I approached the classroom. I never had an issue making new friends or communicating with people, but learning progressing past the basics. Hell, even mastering the basics didn’t came easily to me with Japanese.

Most of that is due to timing. I can chart periods of getting sick coinciding with some of the most crucial lessons explaining cornerstone material beginning with days of the week, specific counting styles, and being able to explain the meaning of a word.

I’m not saying this to pass the buck or pretend that I couldn’t have tried harder. More that I created a hole that kept getting deeper. Anxiety begets anxiety— and soon enough I wanted to avoid Japanese altogether. Not ideal when that feeling pronounces itself in elementary school in an arc that lasts till the end of high school.

I’ve said my reason for coming to Japan was to “close the circle.” I wanted to emphatically shut the chapter of my life where I felt I had wasted thirteen years on something that made me sweaty & disheartened. Really— I came to slay a motherfucking demon.

I spent Monday through Friday speaking Japanese from about eight am till four pm. On the weekends it’s a fair toss depending on if I go out anywhere. And all of that is done without much thought or concern going into how my Japanese is going to be received.

That’s light years away from how I felt arriving. And eons away from the end of my schooling where I practically bolted out of the classroom once I finished.

None of this is to say that I’ve developed beyond a comfortable functional version of Japanese. I’m far from perfect— and don’t envision myself hitting the JLPT levels of 1 or 2. It’s not a necessity for any future I can imagine at the moment. But, I do want to keep expanding my vocabulary so I can understand my students and fellow teachers— it can be annoying to have to pull up a dictionary every couple minutes to try and hold a conversation.

Going to live in Japan to settle some old anxiety surrounding your childhood education may seem a bit extreme. You wouldn’t be wrong to think that. But, I’ve got a habit of taking extremely willful actions when I feel scared or incapable of doing something. I imagine it as my own version of the “Kool-aid man” charging through a wall. I don’t always scream “Oh, yeah!” Afterwards, but I’m known for resembling the Energizer bunny at times.

So, what am I saying?

Did I travel halfway across the world to put an old ghost to rest?

Am I incapable of half-measures?

Am I only recently taking full advantage of my experience here?

Quite possibly, yes.

But that’s alright. I wager in the grand scheme of things, I was either always going to make it over here or bunk out of the immersion program early on. I graduated— so here I am.

Not living the weeb dream or haughty heights of someone imagining their version of teaching English is making any huge scholastic impacts. But an authentic attempt to meet people where they’re at— and offer where I am in return.

I don’t yet know what all this experience has to offer me— and it might be that I won’t understand for several years yet.

But before I could truly be here a hundred percent, the parts of the past I held onto. The half-dead dreams I still dragged behind me. I had to let them go.

To do that, winter had to go ten rounds in the ring with me. Because I am a stubborn bastard— especially when I get set on something. Even though I had told myself I came over to Japan without expectations, I had. I think it’s impossible not to. But instead of inflated dreams, I had lines I said I wouldn’t cross. Futures I’d refuse to consider.

I was saying no to things I couldn’t even guess at— all because I was afraid to let go. Truth is— that safety line I held had already been cut. I made it over here and for better or worse, I was going to make that two year mark.

Winter washed it all away. Cold pacific waves on hard, jagged rocks. Whatever I had left to hold shape hit hard and lost form.

It took the return of spring sunshine and new growth to find a tentative outline to that formlessness. Warmth seeped into my chilled bones— and my heart seemed to beat a little faster. I had noticed how much it had slowed.

I’m embracing the joys I find. Reminding myself that a life of discovery is one far more satisfying than one of assumption.

Lush mountainsides surround me as I type out the final thoughts I have before I’ll head up the four flights of weathered stone to my old Soviet style apartment. It’s homey, grass aroma and whoosh of the sliding door keep half-forgotten memories of my first trip in my mind’s peripheral.

It’ll be what I make of it— and as I look down at the completed circle of my past and present merging together, I look up to the cerulean blue sky and a shimmering moon. It’s going to be fun finding out.