'Loneliness in Tokyo is beautiful'

"Loneliness in Tokyo is beautiful"

I met this English girl in a cafe near London Bridge several years ago

And this was the line she quietly said in the middle of our chat

She told me she had lived in Tokyo for a year

Sitting in front of me,
Looked early 20s,
Almost no cosmetics,
Wearing worn-out clothes like she just came out of the bedroom,
yet it all fitted her vibe well.....she said she was working in a theatre.......,

Even from a distance her skinny physique was apparent, as if her sensitivity & fragility inside were unhesitatingly exposed to the outside world through her very thin body...... 

---

A couple of days later, I suddenly remembered her above line

It was not because I agreed with it

But because I found this sentiment of her very average, very plain, very banal, very mediocre, very mundane, very vanilla, and I was about to laugh

Tokyo......

......a big city
......shiny skyscrapers
......night
......neon light
......dazzling
......glittering
......cafe
......couple
......crowded
......silence
......cold-hearted
......soul-less
......anonymous
......foreigner
......female
......alone
and loneliness......

99% of us can get this kind of images out of any big cities in the world

Her line was as worn-out, as over-used as her clothes

But then, several years later,
why do I still now remember this very boring line of her?

I no longer clearly remember her face, her name, her scent, her warmth, her last message, but only this one sentence

---

Now I'm thinking
Probably because I envied her

She called loneliness beautiful......, this implies she'd accepted it already and even found beauties in it

In my London days,
I didn't have such a room/space in my mind to accept my own loneliness like her, even to call it beautiful

I was very much threatened by loneliness

---

A long time passed

Now loneliness is an integral part of my everyday life, an absolute core of my emotions, of my existence, of myself

Without loneliness, I can't live anymore

So now, do I feel loneliness is beautiful and can I finally call it beautiful in front of others, like she did several years back in London?

......No, I don't

I don't think loneliness is such a polite, nice, favourable thing that everyone likes

Also, fundamentally I'm not "qualified" to use this line

This line is only allowed for young fragile sensitive lonely girl living in a capitalistic mega city of a foreign land alone

Only she can pronounce

such a cliché
such an over-sentimental
such an over-romanticised
yet such a dazzling line, like this

"Loneliness in Tokyo is beautiful"