China is lost. 2012 is lost. The summer is lost. The knowledge that you can only start over again so many times. The knowledge that you can never really start over again. Different women. The same desires. Still looking for something authentic about myself at 29. I never found myself, I’ve never come to peace. I’ve only made a truce with my worst instincts.
I staggered home with a limp and fears I was still diseased. I retreated into myself, into a childhood home I vowed never to return to. I always imagined myself as the brave hero. Now I realize I’ve never done anything difficult. I’ve spent my entire life running away from things. Hong Kong was escape. Japan was escape. Shanghai was escape. America was escape from my new identity. Writing was escape from a desk job, from being a waiter. I was driven by fear.
A song played and I remembered her. She was a nurse in Shanghai. She was so afraid. Afraid of everything. She couldn’t be left alone and in the middle of the day she wanted to go back to her apartment to get something but she wanted me to come with her. I was already tired of her and I refused to go because I hated how clingy she was. I was 22, I think. Maybe I was 23. It never occurred to me that something horrible had happened to her and that maybe she wasn’t just weird or crazy but maybe she had been abandoned or abused and her constant need to be with someone was her way of coping with something deeply wrong.
I abandoned her and a couple years later she got pregnant and married a boring local guy who seemed shorter than she was. He was probably the type of guy who would never leave her. I hated how she tried to control me. How egotistical she was. How could she could be so totally focused on herself, so totally driven by fear.