On making myself busy when things get overwhelming
I realised that my family is one of the most cherished things in my life when I was trying my hardest to get away from them—- all of the journeys that I had been on, that I had left previously, it was so I could forget them. It wasn’t all about self-exploration, because I was trying to get away from my family, at its root. It could, at one time, feel like they never really wanted me to be happy. There was always a burden of expectations that never really went away, and I emulated this unhappiness in my own life, because I assumed this was what life was- to be in a constant state of unhappiness. And I had always been the depressed type, but I think that also was because home was mostly like an empty well, where I felt like there were no nutrients. But maybe the matter of the fact was I also didn’t know how to absorb the nutrients; I didn’t have much of an idea. But I know that I survived in chaos, I thrived in it.
I realised it was about this making this journey home. This whole time I had just been making the journey home, when for a long time I didnt know what home was; I was told to hide my foreignness when I was in China (“don’t be so Western!”) and I didn’t know where I belonged. Family is where everyone comes from. It’s the source. And it’s where you return to. It’s where you get all your love and comfort, and where you’re supposed to be loved. If it happens that you are not loved in the place where you’re supposed to be, something has gone wrong.
It’s only when you go away that you can withstand what is here. I had to go on a great journey away from what was here to really appreciate what was, and what is. I guess I never had much ‘object permanence’, which is what the psychologists would call for a child when something went away, and she still knew that it would be there. I didn’t have this because when the adults went away, they normally were not there anymore. And I had to deal with this amount of separation anxiety. I didn’t really know where I was from anymore, or who cared about me. I was constantly confused by the adults who were entering and exiting my life, they themselves a mixture of Chinese and Western. Having so many people enter and exit my life at will was and still is a recipe for disaster, because these adults never seemed to know what they were truly doing with me. This lack of stability was, I feel, not totally good for me. I didn’t really know where the next “meal” was coming from, and I didn’t expect the providers to show up. in that way, I feel like my earlier life was terrifying. I never really let myself hope, because hoping hurt too much; I was always cut off before. Did I even know what a “real family” looked like? I didn’t know what peace looked like, how it felt, how it smelled, I only knew chaos.
And when I got older, I also wanted this chaos. I craved it, it was the only safe place that I knew. I only knew people who knew how to exit.