Into the Darkness, and Out

I've been in China for nine days; I've been in Ningbo for five.  I really don't think I could have written this post before now because I was screwed up.

My first two nights in Shanghai I had my room to myself, which caused me to retreat; I was so crazy jetlagged and I know the cure is to get on local time as soon as possible, but I'm a slave to my circadian rhythms, which are jacked up at the best of times.

It's hard for me to explain depression; when I'm in it, I can't talk about it, and when I'm out of it, I can't describe it.  It is 100% pure misery.  In addition to my regular garden-variety depression and anxiety, once I got to Ningbo I began waking up in the middle of the night with panic attacks and then at 5:30 am with the neighborhood construction.  I knew I had to reach out to family and friends so I did, but it didn't help; it just reminded me of what I was missing back at home.  I was missing everything.

I.  Hated. China.  I hated my bathroom, my bedroom, my apartment, my life, everything.  I had no hot water.  My bed was hard.  My washing machine didn't work.  There was no light in my hallway.  I scanned my contract and found out that my only financial liability if I gave notice on October 25 and left on November 25 was the price of the flight home.  Never mind the fact that I really could not afford the $800 to fly out, and that there was no job waiting for me at home.  No matter, I thought; I would email the district I had been subbing for and beg for my job back.  Subbing every day meant that I would have to take jobs in elementary schools, but I'd do it.  I could be home by Thanksgiving.

Slowly (it felt slow, anyway), pieces fell into place.  I passed my health exam; I got a Chinese cell phone after standing in a million-year-long line in an un-air-conditioned China Mobile store and finding out that my phone is locked and can't use a Chinese SIM card (honestly, I was relieved; I specifically purchased an international texting plan from AT&T and did not want to fool around with swapping SIM cards out).  I got a bank account (though I still have not been paid the first time on the Chinese side, grrr).  School started, which was the biggest factor in yanking me out of my depression.  I need structure, though it's something I didn't recognize about myself until a few years ago; I would love to not work a summer job, but I can't have two and a half months where nothing is required of me.  Apparently I can't even handle a few days of it, if those few days are in a foreign country.  For some reason, getting a blanket at IKEA lifted my mood;

School started.  Thank god, school started.  If I ever doubted that teaching is the right profession for me, the turnaround in my mental state sealed the deal.  It was instantaneous.  I realized that earplugs and a white noise app on my phone could keep me asleep until 6 am.  The fact that my shower head broke and I'm currently cleaning myself with an out-of-control garden hose is a minor annoyance rather than cause for racing home.  It will get fixed; it may take a while, but it will get fixed.  My bed is hard; I can still sleep.

I have friends.  I have food.  I have a bed.  I have a job.  That ain't nothing.  I'm not saying this next 10 months won't be hard; if you know me, you know I will have my moments.  But I think I've made it through the darkness here.  And thank you all for that.

Night Crazies

Since we last spoke I've been in a holding pattern.  I submitted my visa application and have nothing else to do until, at some point, I am presented with a choice of housing (I think?  I feel like I'm constantly asking questions, so I'm just gonna sit tight on this).  I do mostly fine during the day but when I lie down at night, waiting for sleep to come (which is not a guarantee) I get a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.

Which is why I'm here writing at 12:30 am.  I've decided that when the doubt starts creeping in, I'm just going to get up and start cleaning.  Despite a yard sale, a massive charity donation, and various and sundry small purges, I still have crap I need to get rid of, so I got to work on some of it.  Then I sat down and tried to cobble together my syllabus (for the semester? The whole year? We'll see what gets done) using my lousy e-textbook (I have only been dealing with this thing for a couple weeks and I already have about 80 suggestions for the publisher on how not to make a piece-of-shit textbook) and short-story suggestions I'm getting from my friends.  I find this prospect very difficult because I have no idea where my kids will be, prior-knowledge-wise; I get the feeling talking to my academic dean that I need to lower my expectations.  I don't want to think that my students aren't smart, but I know the cultural divide and language barrier can be a lot, so I keep re-calibrating what I think I can expect.

I miss teaching, even though I've only been out for a month or so.  I feel comfortable in planning a year, units, lessons, assignments.  I'm not afraid to go (which I find unsettling; only a neurotic person would worry about not being worried), I've just reached a point where I don't want to.  It's normal, I guess.  A friend told me to embrace all the tears, the sadness, the homesickness because it's all part of the process and I've earned it.  I think she's very wise, and I'm trying to do just that, but maybe not every single night.

Okay.

Today was a big day.  My iPad loaded with my textbooks showed up via FedEx and I received the final set of papers I'll need to fill out for my Chinese visa.  The best part of the day was meeting up with a friend and mentor who used to be my Shakespeare professor.  Our paths rarely cross, but I'm glad we were both able to make time.  We have similar philosophies and temperaments and the conversation always flows easily.  He mentioned that I was calm about leaving, and I realized he was right.  I keep waiting to freak out (as is my wont), but it's not happening.  One day at the end of the school year when I realized that my last employer had found a replacement for me, I had a moment, but that was really more about "What happens if China doesn't pan out?" rather than "What if I've made the wrong choice?"  I keep assuming that I'm in shock and still don't really realize I'm going, but I've had several reality checks.

Today I felt depressed about the whole thing.  I have six and a half weeks left before I leave and I feel like I've reached the center of the seesaw and am balancing in the middle, wiggling.  At the six-week point I'll tip and go barreling down the other side.  Before I know it, I'll be on the plane, gone.

I'm still calm, I'm just calmly uneasy.  I'm not freaking out like I typically do, and I don't know what to make of that.  I feel like a little kid who's fallen off her bike and is lying on the ground, slowly testing out each limb, touching my torso to see if any major organs have ruptured.  Am I okay? I think I am.  I think I'm okay.

I Don't Speak the Language

I don't speak Mandarin.  I can pick out the word for "China" in print, but reading/writing Chinese is a whole different ballgame from speaking and listening.  I'm focusing solely on speaking and listening right now, and it is tough.

The last time I attempted to learn any Mandarin was before my last trip to China and it was a disaster.  I learned "Hello," "goodbye," "thank you," and the one phrase that served me best during my time in Fuxin, "excuse me" (which serves as "sorry" as well).  After that, though, I just couldn't.  I had a block.  I comforted myself with the knowledge that I was only going to be there for three months and that I didn't really need it.

I hated myself for that attitude.  I hate ugly Americans, and there I was, one of them.  Fortunately I was in China, not France or somewhere where that attitude is (rightly) scorned.  Chinese people love to practice their English and are, I've found, delighted to hear me butcher the few Mandarin words I think I know.  They think it's cute, like when a puppy watches TV.  There's an odd mix of awe and pity in every interaction with a Chinese person.  They may want you to take off your glasses so they can see your blue eyes, but everyone in the conversation knows you're incredibly dumb for your unwillingness or inability to learn the damn language.  They're just too polite to bring it up.

So a friend forwarded me a shit ton of Chinese lessons, which I really should be doing right now instead of writing about studying the language, but I'm so excited I could cry (unlike last time, when my tears were born of frustration).  I'm a language fiend; I've studied, in various depths, French, Spanish, and Russian.  I've taken the grammar classes; I've drawn more conjugation tables than I can count.  The people in these lessons talk about the particles that create questions, how "Nĭ hăo ma?" doesn't literally mean "How are you?" but rather "You good [question particle]."  These are things I understand.  Apparently I can't learn Mandarin from stern-faced women barking "How are you?" at me (I wish I remembered what program I tried to use last time; it was terrifying), but I can figure it out if I can put the pieces together.

Tones are still sons of bitches, but I'm trying hard.  I can hear the differences, but I have difficulty reproducing them.  That part is difficult because I've always been a decent mimic; that's probably why languages have been relatively easy for me to learn, up until now.  I spoke Russian with a perfect Moscow accent, French with a Strasbourg accent.  I spoke Spanish like a high-school kid, and I speak Mandarin like a well-meaning but ill-equipped American, which is exactly what I am.  And for now, I'm OK with that.  If this is still where I am six months in, I'll be frustrated and cursing, which is my natural state, and we can all rest knowing that the earth is spinning on its axis.

Happy New Half-Year!

I belong to a Facebook group of women about whom I could rhapsodize forever.  I mean, seriously, these women are sharp and caring as hell, two traits you don't often find together in the same people.  Somehow I lucked into a community of women, each of whom shares those two qualities.  I'm incredibly fortunate, and I'm reminded of that fact every day.

As a whole, the group has not had the most stellar 2015 thus far, so we decided to restart our years on July 1.  My year, for once, has been fine, but in the interest of camaraderie and resolutions (I truly love nothing more on this planet than making new year's resolutions [and then not keeping them, ahem]), I joined in.  I had one resolution:  Not to freak out about going to Ningbo.

I am going, period.  Nothing short of a visa denial or a major international incident could keep me home now, so that's not the issue; I'm not vacillating.  I've been white-knuckling in terror.  Even in the day or so following the resolution, I was still troubled by my decision, but a PM conversation last night put it all into perspective for me.  Underneath my anxiety, like a subtle motif, was the question "why?"  Why was I going? Why was I doing this to myself? Why was I choosing to leave everything and everyone I know for a teaching job half a world away?

I was discussing with a friend what I want in a man (if I ever have been searching, I suppose that search is suspended for now, what with my moving across the planet), and I mentioned I wanted someone who is adventuresome.  She commented that adventures create new neural pathways, which spoke to one of my terrors in life: stagnation.  I had a really nasty case of depression in my late teens/early 20s that stagnated me for years, and it took a long time to climb out of it; since then, I've always been moving forward: I've had a few different jobs, but mostly I was in school, where you can see your progress neatly on paper.  After getting my bachelor's degrees I moved right on to grad school (thought not my first choice, it really was the best decision).  I've been out of grad school for over a year and I've felt... stuck.  I loved the job I just left, but it was part-time and therefore never meant to be permanent for me.  I'd been looking for another job since I got there, but even then, even if I had gotten on of the public-school job I applied for, then what?  What would happen five or ten years down the road?  There is something to be said for stability, but I've always found it difficult to grow and change when I'm at the same place every single day on and on world without end amen.

So I applied for a job in China, the country I said I'd never return to.  Because it's a whole different part of the country (southeast versus northeast), and a whole different challenge (teaching American curriculum to Chinese kids).  It's a different life from the one I led last time (I'm going alone, I've been assured that there is an expat community, and I'll be living in an apartment, versus going with a cohort where [except for one Scottish dude] we were the only Americans in the city and living in a blocked-off section of student dorms).  It's definitely very different from where I am now.

So I begin to worry that maybe my obsession with progress, change, and forward motion isn't normal. Do regular people live like this? But then I realize that that worry flies in the face of my half-year resolution, and I try to get it to pipe down.  Because the fact is, ready or not (and oh, I'm not, not yet), I'm going.  And I might as well try to enjoy it, because otherwise I'm not moving forward on my own propulsion, I'm just dragging myself along.

Part the First: Dreadticipation

I have a long and storied history of starting blogs and then dropping them within a matter of weeks, days, sometimes even hours.  Anymore I find it difficult to focus long enough to write something.  Where is all the artistic stamina from my teen years, when I stayed up all night writing shitty, shitty prose?  Maybe it's best that drive is gone.

I hope this blog is different, though; I hope I keep up with it, because last time I went to China blogging was required and it allowed me to process and express my feelings about being halfway around the world essentially alone and on my own.  I don't leave for 59 days but the ball has begun rolling so I feel like I should document what's going on in my head now, for posterity.  Or self-obsession.  Maybe both.

I got my plane ticket and my hotel reservation for Shanghai today, and I did my first cultural competency training.  I don't feel like it's real yet, because it just feels like a vacation to Shanghai (which it won't be. I'll be doing training every day I'm there; I hope there's a little time for sightseeing at night, though if there isn't, I'll only be two hours away by train).  I know there will be ten months stretched before me, but I don't feel them yet.  On the other hand, I have commented that I feel like I'm headed to the chair (which is a wildly grotesque comparison, I admit. I'm not dying as punishment for a crime I may or may not have committed; I've been given an opportunity to live abroad that lots of people would be thrilled to have).  Though I know how lucky I am, I also know that I have to cram every little thing in before I go.  I considered doing a going-away party, but that's so "Everyone celebrate meeeeeeeeeee!" so I have to see people "one last time" one or two at a time.  It's overwhelming.

I started my summer job today and I had to ask for Independence Day off.  It falls on a Saturday this year, and my family has a big barbecue.  It's always held on a Saturday so the previous four years, I worked on July 4, which is the day everyone wants off.  I went in armed with an affecting speech: "I've worked every 4th of July since I've been here! I have to miss Thanksgiving, Christmas, Saint Patrick's Day [my family loves holidays] and Easter while I'm gone!"  But when I said, "I need July 4 off," my boss shrugged and said, "Okay. Just write it down; you know how I forget things."

Oh.  Just that easy.  Why was I disappointed?  Was I hoping for Judy to recognize the drama of being away from home for so long? Why did I care? I see this woman two months out of the year.

So, I'm going.  My expertise has been acknowledged by the Chinese government (oh, Chinese government, ell oh ell for real.  Those degrees mean almost nothing) and I have a letter of invitation.  Soon I'll have to send my passport off for the visa.  I'm excited.  I'm scared.  I'm worried I'll be depressed while I'm gone.  I'm worried that the life I leave behind for a year is not the life that will be waiting when I return.  What if I miss everyone all the time? What if they don't miss me at all? What if it's like Opposite It's a Wonderful Life, It's a Terrible Life, and everyone realizes how much better their lives are without me? What if I want to come home? What if I never want to go home?

I struggle with indecision.  This quotation from The Bell Jar has always spoken to my deepest fears:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

I've always worried about making the wrong choice, but also being stuck, unable to make any choice.  Once you choose a door, all other doors lock forever, but if you never choose, the doors slowly melt into the walls.  I have made a decision.  What other wonderful opportunities have been closed off to me forever because I made this one? What if the love of my life is here in St. Louis, waiting for me, and I'm off gallivanting in Asia, teaching lit by day and drinking baijiu by night? (I will not be drinking baijiu; it is the Devil's toilet water.)  What do I lose by leaving?

That's the real question: What do I lose by leaving?  I can't answer it, ever; it's like a Zen koan, but instead of provoking doubt, it is the doubt.

I have been told by many, many people in my life (most of them far wiser than I) that I spend too much time in my head, and if this isn't proof that they're right, well then, I have no idea what is.

What do I lose by leaving?