I Cannot Believe I Hitchhiked to Ukraine
By: Mengan Yang
Tags: Creativity, Travel, Enlightenment, Russia, Self Improvement

Disclaimer: this article is not an article, is a script for my youtube

sadness:

Hey, 44 year old version Eric, you might thought you have always been a mentally tough human animal. But you are wrong. Let me tell you the part that you’ve already forgotten but you should not.

@11 I feel worthless: This hitchhike mission from Vladivastok to Sainktpeterurg wasn’t scary for me. I mean I have already done some thoughts experiment. But I can understand why most human animals that I’ve encountered think it’s super hard or fearful to hitchhike across Russia especially as a asian foreigner in covid19 and winter(I’ve even never seen snow before this trip when I was still in Taiwan) . To sum up, I knew I will be successful.

12But

Being refused and ignored by god knows how many human animals is different stories.

I thought human ignoring me on the street only happened in Taiwan, afterall, I subscribed to so many social experiments youtuber from america, their interactions are pretty damn well.

I expected humans live in Russia will talk to me. I expected humans live in Russia will welcome me. I was very well prepared, to be liked, licked, and make friends.

But umm, I guess I umm I really know nothing. I thought my “Do you want to make friend with me” questions , is pretty straightforward, quite polite, rather friendly. But umm, whatever reason it is, for me is so damn hard to find people who want to spend adequate attention on me.

I failed more than 9000 times to find people who want to talk to me longer than 2 minutes, I feel like nobody wants to make friend with me, I feel like I am no longer interesting and friendly. My brain happened to be the most powerful, it helped me connected the time when I was bullied at school, being unloved by my narcisstic parents and brother (I am sorry dad and mom, I gotta be honest with my own story.) Do you know what’s the most devastating part? Is when Russian laughing at me on the street, it’s not like “ohh there is a funny looking traveler with peculair outfit”. No it’s not. It’s whenever I approached them, they refused to talk to me, walk away. But after we separate for 3 seconds. They laughed out loud, they probably thought I don’t understand Russian at all. But my ear, hear very clearly when they talked behind my back and laughed: “What the fuck he want to make friend?

what hurt me the most is people say :“wow this stupid guy want to make friend with russian, look at what he is wearing” “do you listened to his russian? do you see his hair? do you see his eye?” “so funny right?” or They would try to be funny by imitating chinese pronunciation or appearance kind of classic joke.

I thought being funny is a good characteristic, but umm. now I dont know.

But I know one thing , I am not a fake warrior.

13 I never give up. I still tried countless method like scientists, countless approaching people questions, scripts, different walking speed, different weather. Yeah it’s certainly true that I probably haven't tried hard enough. BUt i dont understand why the hell making friend in public is so hard? Maybe I did something wrong again i guess.

ohh one more thing, approaching strangers is fucking exhausting man.

I have two heavy backpacks with me, with big laptop, entire filming camera equipment and thick winter clothes.

And even though I said hitchhiking is easy for me, when hundreds of cars, and 2 hours has passed, I could not stop thinking that I am loser, “what the hell i am doing , what a stupid idea” this kind of negative self talk will come up in my head. or “I should have listened to my parents.” I feel worthless when drivers in the gas station stop their car but don’t even turn their head to me when they obviously know I am trying to communicate with them. I feel scared when some drivers point middle finger at me. I was horrified when some russian shouted at me for not acting according to what they wish. sadness 5063

Eventually, I was depressed in Siberia. I feel like no one wants me anymore, and no one know me here, and most people on this planet don’t even come to this place. It was, you know is russian we say пизде

I was so happy when I found out what was wrong, I realized I was making unrealistic expectations and negative interpretations.

This trip is probably all about lowering expectations.

But this is not what I only learned