"Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.”
― Anaïs Nin
Someday I will stop quoting her, but not today. It's a bit too appropriate.
I find it to be useless to try and predict where I will be five years from now. I don't know about other people, but the moment I graduated from high school, I never stayed anywhere too long. I felt a longing to explore, which is how I ended up in China in the first place. My IP address may say that I'm in Los Angeles, but hey, how else can I access Facebook? ;) China has had it blocked since the uprisings in Xinjiang, and sometimes even Gmail is blocked. In any case, I haven't stopped doing something with my life and aiming for the unknown... while still pursuing my dreams, of course.
But what happens when those dreams shatter? Despair? Fear? Can hope even arise? I like to think so; I have some hope now, though I do not reveal why. It's in my best interests to not reveal my plans exactly, mainly because I need to protect the identities of those who I'm working with. I happen to know some people is all, and if I'm lucky, my Crazy Plan of Happiness Get will work out eventually within the next couple of years.
Years.
Years.
It is hard not to be afraid of hard work after such a disaster. I worked very hard to graduate from college, I worked very hard to get through my programme, I sacrificed a lot for my dream of becoming a philosophy professor only to find that it wasn't what I wanted after all. I had a joy in sharing what I learned because it would help others; the professional academic field, however? It's... not an environment I want to be in, and not something I consider healthy for myself. The competitions, the pettiness, the ego-trips, the pretentiousness, the lack of welcoming... No, not all academics are like that. But the ones I know who aren't that way are the ones who either are greatly respected for not giving a rip or are disdained for not giving a rip but still being on top. I had a choice- to continue (because a scholarship for my Ph.D is so easy to get; all I have to do is ask) and try to be like them and not give into that kind of thing or to decide that it wasn't worth it and walk away.
I chose the second option. I decided it wasn't worth it.
What do you do with six years gone? With a degree that you bled, sweat, and cried over that you no longer want? When you disappear into a black hole and hardly anyone hears from you for over a year and then you barely re-emerge, popping up here and there, only to announce at the very end that no, you are not going to pursue this after all, how do you endure the criticism? The questions of, "Well, what are you going to do with your life? With this crumbling economy, how can you NOT use your degree?" I was offered the chance at highly-paid positions in government, but I turned those down, which only caused more hysteria.
I still get offers. I still turn them down.
A lot of my family thinks it's stupid for me to turn these down, but I just shake my head. It's not what I want to do, and I will be damned if life means doing something I hate in order to survive anymore. I did it for the past three years, and I will never do it ever again. Sure, there is some suffering in life. It is unavoidable. But when the bad outweighs the good, when you cannot even come home without chaos? That is when something has to give. If it's not my job, it's the environment I'm in, and if it's not the school being ridiculous then it's my health. International hospitals, after all, are expensive and trust me: you don't want to go to a Chinese hospital. I have stories. You wouldn't be able to eat for days if I told you.
I have had the support of some of the best in the field. I have even been interviewed for a book that was published, entirely based on the skills that I have gained in my programme and my experiences. I have been asked not to stop, not to give up on academia, I have been practically begged not to walk away. I've also been begged to walk away, that the sleepless nights weren't worth it, that watching my body waste away was not worth it. My mind was deteriorating at one point; I could not have gotten through my thesis proposal if I hadn't been put on adderall, and I probably wouldn't even be mentally awake enough to write this entry if not for it. I have to take pills to get to sleep at night. And yet, in spite of all of this, a professional career is just outside of my grasp. "If only you could get through this final year," my family would say. "Then you can be free."
They were right, just not in the way they imagined.
Am I throwing away my talent? Maybe. Am I throwing away a fantastic opportunity to make a lot of money, especially with the Mandarin Chinese language? It is entirely possible. But I know that for me, looking at the shadows under my eyes, seeing the ways my body shakes, the way my mind has become so torturous that I can't go to sleep at night or stay awake during the day... The stress is killing me. It is literally driving me insane, and I know for a fact that I cannot remain this way. Something needs to change, and that change ultimately begins with myself.
I returned from the academic conference with my dreams shattered, my resolve gone, and lost faith in almost everything, especially myself. At that point, I had lost my jobs due to my endometriosis being so bad I couldn't even walk. I would cry so hard I would get a charlie horse in my neck. Fighting this condition has been almost as bad as fighting to get through this programme- the two combined make getting through the day incredibly difficult. Somewhere in there, I stopped dreaming. I thought I was destined for this path, and any sense of self would just be eroded away while my body went through the motions. Eventually, it would give out and I'd probably have to inject an IV in myself to survive or something. It sounds pretty dramatic, I know, but I was convinced for a while that I wasn't going to make it.
One day last year in autumn, I decided that death was preferable to living. I had nothing to live for- my dreams were shattered, I had nothing to wish for or look forward to, my job was something that was almost physically painful to endure, my school was randomly phoning me with random requirements for graduation that they made up on the spot (and then laughed at me when I actually dropped what I was doing to fulfill their crazy demands), and to top it all off, my body was shutting down. I couldn't sleep for days. I couldn't eat. I dropped weight at an alarming rate (which was welcome aesthetically, but not healthy), and I was so tired during the day that I was unable to function through work, school, or class. I couldn't even handle being on the internet; it required too much concentration to look at a web page or watch a video. There was not a single positive thing to my life, despite being "envied" or "hated" for whatever it was I had.
So, death was better than living. At least, better than the life I had. I had entertained the idea, but hadn't actually gone through an attempt. I had tried to convince my family to accept me quitting my programme; with a year left to go, they couldn't understand and thus refused. Perhaps I'm too Asian/Confucian in this respect, but I could not disobey a direct request from my family, especially when it distressed them. I may reject job offers, but this was something I could not do. I could not just ignore them and leave; it would have severed the relationship we have. Thus, a smile was put on my face, and it became a regular habit to take more sleeping pills than the norm to shut my mind up and shut my body down enough to sleep. I stopped letting myself cry. I stopped helping myself, or letting anyone know that I even needed help.
Unfortunately, this resulted in me learning a very valuable lesson. To quote again: “When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.”
One day I woke up and there was blood everywhere. Glass was shattered, the water was running in the tub, and my roommates were freaking out, crying, and completely shaken up. I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed I tried to kill myself. Over half a bottle of vodka was gone, and I don't even drink that often.
That was when I decided: fuck this shit.
This is not worth it. None of this is worth it. Five years ago, I had dreams and laughter and I considered myself genuinely blessed. I had a bright future, and overall I was happy. Sure I had my bad days now and then, but I was happy. Now I was clearly going mad, and because this life has become unbearable, then I had to change it. I was the only one ultimately who could decide what happened with my life, and I was going to do something that didn't involve going mad. Or glass. Or blood, for that matter.
So I decided to walk away.
Turning my back on my accomplishments in order to try and make room for different dreams (and more risks!) was the hardest decision I ever made. Out of respect for the programme itself, my mentors, and my family, I agreed to finish my thesis and get my degree. In the meantime, I began laying the foundation for other projects. I put myself in therapy, still ongoing. As 2011 came to an end, my life was beginning to turn around, bit a bit. I had decided against moving to Japan merely because I needed a potentially permanent break from academics and that I refused to teach English just to put food on the table ever again. If I make it to Japan, it will be because I have another skill that gets me there. If I get my Ph.D, it's because I believe enough in what I wish to publish and having my doctorate "would be nice". Perhaps my mind will change and I will somehow come to enjoy professional academia again, but for now? It is time for that to end.
But it terrifies me. The idea of giving so much of myself and having it fall apart in the end terrifies me beyond words. Technically, my dreams didn't literally shatter- I could continue, if I wished. However, I would be living a lie. It would be more pushing, more crawling, more eroding of the self to make room for what I "should" do, and obviously I had gone too far in the name of obligation. It made me think how often we destroy ourselves for the wants and wishes of others, and how we mean so well and yet it can go so badly. We adjust ourselves to the world, fearing being called selfish, naive, stupid, failure, these words are the whip that forces us to press forward. Some get out of that rut early. Some don't realise there is something wrong until they literally almost die, such as myself. Some never even realise they had lost themselves at all, and for those people I weep the most. But vowing to never do that again will not protect me from failure. It doesn't ensure success. It doesn't erase the fear that I will begin something again and give it everything I've got only to watch it crumble once again.
That doesn't mean I will give up. That scene of blood and broken glass is etched in my mind too much to ever stop. My body had, in that moment, given me its final warning: change or die. Tear from the cycle, or die. If death is preferable to the life that I am living, then I am not living appropriately. My accomplishments and so-called talents be damned!
Despite this resolve, fear strikes my heart... and this tells me I'm making the right decision. If my dreams aren't scaring the shit out of me, then I'm not dreaming high enough. My fear of remaining like this is stronger than my fear to fail. I am terrified out of my mind, but the amount of support I have received, the gifts I have been showered with in order to continue laying the foundations of these new dreams and goals have been such a sign that yes, yes, yes I have made the right decision. I am doing the right thing, even if it means I have no idea where the road is going anymore. I have such amazing friends, and I wonder if I deserve them at times, but they are with me every step of the way.
The economy in the United States is not good. I know this. California is expensive. I also know this. But I'm not moving alone. I have so many resources. I have such amazing support. I may have no clue what I'm doing, but I am going to succeed one way or another. I will be true and I will be me. No more walls of obligation. My dream job won't come right away, but as long as I've got this behind me, I think I'll be alright. ;)
In the meantime, I have an upcoming trip to Guangzhou/Hong Kong/Macau for an extended weekend, a potential trip to two countries in the Middle East, and of course, my graduation. I'm still in shock that people are coming to fly to see us graduate. From there, it's a week in Japan just having fun. I'll have earned it, I know it. Then, on July 31st, my visa will expire. I will have had nine visas from China alone in my passport, accompanied by two different sets of stamps from South Korea, four stamps from Japan, and one from the European Union. I will return home an entirely changed person, even if I am not going down the path I thought I was. My future shall be crafted with my own hands (and a little help from my friends). It won't be easy. But it will be worth it.
I was at the bottom. The only way now? Is up. And I am going to soar.
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