MRI & Tentative Future Plans

I sprained my knee a week ago dancing to “Mr. Brightside” and had to go to the hospital. It was a sort of humiliating experience in some ways. My physicality is very much up for discussion in this country—or if not discussed, avoided with commitment. I’ve mentioned before that my body is simply outside the realm of normalcy here, while in America it is most average. Actually, I think my body is outside of the realm of possibility here. To China, it simply does not exist. I felt ashamed to injure myself, ashamed to draw attention to my body at all. I feel like I am being judged for this injury—if I were smaller, maybe it wouldn’t have happened? But I know this isn’t true. I have had joint issues all of my life. I remember talking about my knee with my pediatrician. This injury also came after a week of intensive ED behavior involving over-exercising and a fixation with my watch statistics.

The hospital visit itself was rather interesting, though getting injured on our fellows bonding trip was not ideal. We took an expensive cab to the hospital recommended by our insurance, but I do believe it was worth it. They prescribed me painkillers and put me through extensive X-rays and an MRI. I was also given traditional Chinese medicine sprays, which I thought was sort of beautiful juxtaposed with the Apple store-like hospital and all of the scientific testing. We all know my takes on biomedicine (itself an ethnomedicine). My doctor delivered my MRI results to me via WeChat.

Since then I have been so limited in what I can do comfortably. I miss riding my bike and walking around the city. I haven’t left the apartment in nearly 48 hours because I do not want to stress my leg. On Thursday I proctored an exam and had to stand for two hours—the result was more pain on Friday. I feel sort of othered and alone as a result, although those feelings are also a culmination of lots of other circumstances of being in another country while it feels like life goes on without you in a half-world across the globe. I am not confident about my relationships in America. They seem to be going a little off the rails. But also, I am a little off the rails. The future I had imagined for myself when I left, a future that was a continuation of the life I was leaving (as if I could just pause and return), no longer seems entirely possible or even preferable. I find that funny because when I left I very much saw that life as the real one, the one I would come back to. Now as I said, the life happening in Philadelphia feels like a fake one. How could it be 4 AM there when it is so clearly DAY?

I think it could be helpful to me not to see my life in such clear-cut steps. Instead of chunks of being, I am experiencing phases that blend into one another. This is all part of the path of my life, less like chapters or steps or anything concrete. It is all a lot more liminal, more like waves. Seeing it in such defined pieces has made me feel like my life is progressing without any growth. It makes me feel like I am just climbing a stairway to death. This is not the outlook Nora McInerny (or my Pennsylvania therapist) would want for me. I think it would behoove me to consider the gray area.

Hellobike

I am happiest when I am riding my bike through the city. “My bike” is a very loose term. There is no real ownership involved (is it Communist?). The street is littered with parked bikes and you can unlock any of them with a mini-program within Alipay, paying just a few cents to ride anywhere you want. I love biking in the wide bike lanes, but I am most delighted by the bike-specific left turn lanes, which make me feel like the king of the road as I speed crosswise through the intersection. You park the bike wherever you land and go on your merry way. Though I try not to think too much about it, I believe I am somewhat of a spectacle. Once, an old man took a photo of me riding the bike and I tried to laugh it off.

On that subject, my shoe size is not readily available in China (and I expect my pants size isn’t either, though in the spirit of ED recovery I have chosen not to check). I have dubbed myself “Bigfoot,” despite my shoe size being the most common women’s size in the United States. It’s another way in which I am so visible: I am taller, larger than everyone else and take up more space. I have decided not to be ashamed of that. I have spent the last 20 years afraid of my body and the last year in the early stages of repairing this most important relationship. I refuse to let the relative body diversity here make me feel like I am unacceptable, not when I already exert so much energy to fight the body-negative thoughts that come just from within.

Another thing I have noticed about joining this fellowship is how important it seems to me to emphasize that I had a whole life I abandoned for this position. I keep finding myself talking about all the things I had before this: a full-time job I’d received two promotions at, a cat, a car, a Roth IRA, and a life entirely financially independent from my parents in a city with no connection to my family. I have noticed how crucial this seems to my identity, to prove that I completed something before I came here. I think in one way it is a manifestation of the weirdness I feel about being older and “more established” than some of the other fellows. It’s also representative of the conflict I felt in choosing to come here, all of the nights I spent asking Emily, “Why did I decide to give up my entire life to move across the world?” and making her tell me why, again and again.

In a deeper, more painful sense, I know I am protective of this fact of my post-graduate years because it was something so completely out of my control. I had no choice about it, no option to move home for a while before I set out alone. I was in this position from the moment I walked across the stage at Bryn Mawr, holding my prop diploma. And like accidental teenagers mothers who get married and proceed to have more and more kids—in my uncharitable perspective—I have to emphasize this part of my life to make it seem like I wanted it, like I chose it, and that it wasn’t just something that happened to me that I made the best of.

I’ve coped with some aspects of this identity discomfort by constantly reminding everyone that I am quickly approaching 25, as though hearing the year of my graduation and that I “worked for two years before this!” will make them think how mature and wise and accomplished I am. But I have also coped by holding on to aspects of that old life. I feel overly protective and nervous about my cat’s welfare. I developed a plan to save $10,000 more while I am here so I can return home with more than the cost of my student loans in savings. I browse Philadelphia job postings daily, just to worry about what position I will be able to achieve and how much money I make when I go back. And while part of my is so tied to the plan of returning, part of me wonders what it would be like to stay here, to be a true expatriate.

I do not know what form things will take. I say this while looking out the sliding glass door of my 26th floor apartment, past our dusty balcony and towards the lights of the high-rise buildings just across the way. I am not going to pretend that today that fact feels comforting—clearly not, if I am scheming about my car loan. But just as I sit here and worry about the future in mid-August, I was sitting in my dorm room listening to old Kanye four years ago. And worry about the SAT four years before that. In a year I could be here or in the US or somewhere else or nowhere at all. But thank god I won’t be in high school again.

DeliLife & A Near-Miss With Nipple Clamps

I had been dreading today for a few weeks. In order to receive legal residency, we are required by China to undergo full medical exams unlike anything I have ever had in America. I am interested in the history of these exams—I heard there are precedents for excluding foreigners with various diagnoses, including HIV. They do seem to be quite an organized affair, with an entire hospital designated for travelers. I saw the largest concentration of white people I have encountered so far, all accompanied by a Chinese translator/advocate. We had our own chaperone, a man named Vincent who met us at the hospital and carried us through the process.

Before we entered the hospital proper, we had to get our photos taken, passport style, and clip them to our registration forms. In my photo I look both washed out and exceedingly disgusted. To be fair, it was 9 AM and we had been barred from eating or drinking for twelve hours. We proceeded to another building, where we did some more registration. I was very nervous for the next part. Returning fellows had warned us that the exams were very invasive and extensive and that we would have to parade around in hospital gowns in a group. I imagined myself wear a tiny, flimsy paper gown being publicly humiliated in front of my new colleagues. Fortunately, it was not that dramatic. We each received a locker to put our belongings in before we went into small dressing rooms to remove the clothes on the upper halves of our bodies and dress in the gowns. Thankfully the gowns were made of a sturdy waffle-weave fabric with multiple ties and no possibility of accidental nudity. Upon gowning up, we were sent into the hallway where we paraded from one tiny hospital room to another.

In each room, we would hand our documents to the medical staff and slip behind a curtain for whatever procedure we would be receiving. The least interesting exams were the X-ray and the blood pressure check, although the X-ray machine was not like one I had ever seen. We also received an ultrasound and an EKG. I had never been given either before and was unprepared for the tiny clips they placed on me for the EKG. I thought perhaps they were about to nipple clamp me. At the end of each exam, the staff handed us back our forms and directed us to the next room. It was efficient and impersonal, which I was thankful for. Too many people in that building had touched me; I didn’t need anyone to talk to me.

After getting my blood drawn (and getting through it without nearly fainting for the first time ever—am I cured?), I was allowed to dress and our group checked out of the hospital. We had been told these exams would be a bonding experience. I think they were. There is nothing like sitting in the hallway with your coworkers, all pressing pieces of gauze against your fresh wounds. I felt bonded to the other patients too. We had been through something strange together.

We happily taxied to campus, where we visited a nearby mall to break our fast. I was delighted by the mall food cart, adorably called “DeliLife” and offering many options. I had something that Cheng Mun translated as “Healthy Vegetarian Dumpling.” Today we also successfully set up our new Chinese bank accounts.

I keep thinking that as these admin tasks are completed that I will start to feel more normal, that things will settle down and become routine. I am no longer convinced this is true. No matter how much time I spend sorting through the garbage in our house, organizing my sock drawer, and signing up for a bike subscription, I will still be an American in China, a traveler 8,000 miles from home. It is going to be an experience with high and low points. I will ride the wave of being a person just like I do in America. The difference here is that right now, everything I do takes 20x more emotional energy than it would. We went to the superstore a few days ago and I have never been more overwhelmed. All the colors and product categories were the same as in America: you could buy fresh fruit and an egg beater at the same time, yet despite the familiarity, I could read none of the text, the organization of the aisles felt counterintuitive, and calculating prices meant constant division by 6. (If you are an American in China, you need to work on your memory of the multiples of 6.) I left the store with some fruit and a towel, no real groceries or necessities. The experience simply required too much mental energy to fully complete.

As in my last post, I find myself being careful not to make it appear that I am unhappy. While I have plenty of complaints, I am doing fine. I am tired and drained and confused, but I am not miserable. I am trying to simply be. I have realized that the best I can do is just be here, allowing the experience to take the form that it takes. I think each day will look different. Maybe sometimes I will feel like a full member of society or at least like a competent visitor! Other days I know I am going to struggle to make it out of the apartment. I have decided to accept that. As much pressure as I feel to become a more easygoing person than I was before, to enjoy myself and be carefree, I do not think that is very me. Instead, I aim to feel whatever feelings I have and recognize that like waves, they are only passing.

For Good/Bones

I left Philadelphia a month ago. I cried bitterly. Today I finally made it to my apartment, the final destination where I will be spending the next 10 months. I do not think I will cry bitterly today, but maybe later this week.

I have a song and a poem stuck in my head. The song is “For Good” from Wicked. I was thinking about what my former boss said when I told him about this opportunity. He told me that I would not come back the same person. I know that this is true, that this is a period of growth and that I cannot possibly come back the same person.

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better.

It’s not that I think I will come out of this worse or better or anything with a value assigned to it. I don’t usually take notes on life from hit musicals, although there is something to be said for living by the law of Legally Blonde. Truthfully, it is that I cannot imagine how I could be different. I will be an unknown different, not one that I have already identified and made into a goal like so many different versions of myself born of therapy and self-reflection. These thoughts are an undercurrent right now, as I try to adjust to the fact that I moved 7,500 miles away from the city I have come to call my home and now live on the 26th floor.

The poem is a well-known one: “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith. I don’t know any NPR fan who doesn’t know it or any mentally-ill college student who hasn’t printed it out. In my head, I keep repeating the last line, a line my brain has completely divorced from the context of the poem.

This place could be beautiful, right?

You could make this place beautiful.

I am having a very literal relationship to it. I must make this apartment beautiful. If it is not clean and beautiful and neat and well-investigated, I will not be comfortable. In the midst of so much uncertainty—in myself, in my new position, in my social circle, my ability to absorb any Mandarin—I need a bedroom that looks at least a little bit like me. Right now it needs a Magic Eraser and my belts are hanging on the wall by a hook with two cats on it. Not very much like me.

In some ways, I am trying to pretend that this situation will be over soon. Not because I am unhappy, but because in the short-term, coping mechanisms are needed. I do not think I will always feel this way, but right now it all feels just a little too daunting to face head-on. I feel ashamed about my overwhelm. I think that I should be taking it all in stride, moving forward with no fears or doubts. I should be intrepidly hopping on the metro and memorizing Chinese vocabulary and becoming everyone’s best friend. This shame comes back to haunt me in Eating Disorder World. I have been avoiding looking in mirrors for days.

I know that these feelings will pass and be replaced by new ones. I write about them not because I feel distressed or need help, but because I want to document them. In forty years there will be words and images that remain from this trip that won’t encapsulate the real highs and lows. They will be a blurry average of the things that stuck with me. But sitting in my brand new bedroom at 11 PM on the very first night, one month after I left my house and my cat and my city, I am feeling a little disoriented. And I would like to remember this part too.