“Hey there. How’s it going? We haven’t talked for a long time.” I felt some relief at the sight of him. It had been so long and I’d been lonely.
My friend gave me a warm smile. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. “How have you been holding up?”
For anybody else, I would have lied and said “not bad”, or “okay”, but for this friend, only the truth would do. I couldn’t help giving a sigh first though. Was it a feeling of relief, or was I just feeling sorry for myself?
“Uh-oh,” he said. He had heard my sigh and the expression on my face and already knew more about my current situation than anybody besides my wife. I had gotten so good at hiding the truth from everybody that suddenly being out in this way felt just like coming out as gay all over again. Was it a good feeling? I didn’t know what I felt, but I had to continue.
“I haven’t been well,” I admitted. “I mean, I guess there’s nothing really wrong… I mean, … ugh. Why is it so hard to talk right now?”
My friend came close and put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just take it slowly. Let’s sit down while we talk.”
“Okay,” I agreed. His kind manner almost made me want to cry. When was the last time anyone had shown me this kind of care? And he hadn’t really even done anything! But this is who he was, and I knew that. He had been my closest friend since we were kids and … my thoughts were all jumbled. How could I say what I needed to say?
We sat down and I took a few deep breaths, doing my utmost to keep the tears at bay. “Well, I’ve been here for nearly a year,” I began. “It’s not what I had hoped. Well, I don’t know what I had hoped for actually, but not this.”
“So, you moved here with your family a year ago,” my friend prompted, “and what did you expect?”
“I don’t know!” I felt so inadequate to explain what I was going through. “A year ago, I was a full time teacher at a university. I made enough money to support my family, but I kept getting the impression that I was somehow in the wrong place. Fate had taken a turn and I had missed it. I thought that maybe I had moved so many times that I just wasn’t used to settling down for so long. I probably started having that feeling after just a year or so in, but I stayed a full three years. The feeling wouldn’t go away.”
My friend nodded in understanding. I’d told him this part of the story before. “Well anyway,” I continued, “we made a pretty radical change in our lives. We moved to a new city where we didn’t know anybody. I found a part-time job right from the start teaching English and my wife started making plans. The idea was that although I would continue to work part-time and earn enough for our family’s survival, my wife would begin working toward her own goal of having her own business, probably a restaurant.”
“I remember that was the plan,” my friend nodded. “And then?”
“At first, everything was okay. I was home more, so I cleaned the house and did the laundry. I took care of the kids during the day and was responsible for teaching them at home. It was actually fun.”
“You’re using the past tense,” my friend noted.
“Yeah. Things didn’t stay so perfect for long. In ten years of marriage, I had always been the one stressing over how to make enough money to support our family. It was only a few years ago that we were finally feeling somewhat stable. Now my wife was feeling that pressure, and more.”
“More?”
“Yeah, and that’s the problem.” Time to come out. “I may do okay in front of a class, but otherwise, I’m actually quite shy.” I stopped for a moment to let that information sink in.
“Shy?” he remarked. “That’s no secret! Who knows you that doesn’t know that?”
“You’d be surprised,” I continued. “But it’s worse than you think. Besides talking to my wife on the phone once or twice a month, I never talk to anyone on the phone. I never go anywhere or do anything where I might have to interact with anyone. I mean, … I can pretend when I do bump into someone. I was telling my wife how that’s one thing I like about teaching actually. I get to become a different person in front of the class. It’s like I’m literally two different people.”
“I’m glad to know the more sociable one,” my friend commented.
“There are a few exceptions,” I admitted. “Anyway, in America, it was easier to fake. At least I could use my mother tongue. Here, it’s all Chinese.”
“But aren’t you good at languages?”
“Well, so long as it’s reading or listening, but as soon as I need to communicate with someone else, that shyness really kicks in. I’m totalling incapacitated.”
“Wow. That bad.”
“I mean it,” I said. “I can have conversations with myself all day long in Chinese, but put another person there in front of me, and if there is any way at all to get out of having to speak, I will.”
“So how does this relate?”
“Well, since we got married, and even in America, I’ve had my wife take care of all the phone calls. She handled paying the bills and rent and everything. I remember when we first moved to the States together and it was time to call for some utility and I asked my wife to do it. She was so nervous because English is not her first language. I mean, I’m pretty sure my Chinese now is quite a bit better than her English was then. But I still pushed her to do it. I told her that I wanted her to be free while we lived in America. She shouldn’t have to rely on me for everything. So, I pushed her to be more self-sufficient in another country and in another language.”
I kept talking, “once in a while, she’d ask if I couldn’t make the call this time. But I’d just say that it was good for her. When she was nervous, I would sit with her by the phone, prepared to help her understand the vocabulary or know what to say. I fed her lines and she learned quickly to be able to do just about anything on her own.”
I could see that look of understanding and wisdom in my friend’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything. I imagine he knew what I was going to say at this point, but he knew I needed to get it out. “When we moved back to Taiwan, it was just natural that she would continue to handle all of the social interactions while I handled working and making money. That pattern had worked successfully for years, so why should we change it?”
“But then we moved here,” I said. “And I was trying to fill her shoes more while she tried to fill mine. I think we’ve both failed so far, though we’re not giving up. A year in and she’s still not really making much money. And me? I play with my kids and teach them during the day, but more often than not, I feel like I’m just one of them. I have no real friends.. besides you of course. But most of the time, I’m alone with my thoughts.”
“Oh, and I still haven’t mentioned that I’m losing my job soon. It’s not really the big issue, though it probably should be. I mean, things always work out for us somehow, and I’m sure we’ll be okay, but this does nothing good for my self-esteem. I just don’t like myself recently. I mean, it’s really bad. If I could just be a proper stay-at-home dad, then things would be fine. If I could do everything she did when she was in this role, I think I’d feel fine about things. But I feel like I can’t do anything without her. She still pays all of the bills and utilities. Everything is done in her name. She does all of the shopping, cooking, and even washing the dishes. And me? I’m just a bum.”
My friend looked like he was about to interject, but then he swallowed back down whatever he had been about to say. “I used to write a blog regularly. But … I guess when I’m not feeling very happy about things, I tend to play more games or watch more anime. I just waste time. These last several months especially, I’ve been feeling pretty depressed. I stay up until 3 or 4 or even 5 o’clock in the morning just wasting time. And then I sleep in until the kids wake me up, whenever that happens to be.”
“Oh yeah, and I’ve gained back most of the weight I’d lost before and had felt so proud of losing. I’m sorry. I’m all Mr. Negativity today. Thank you so much though for just sitting there and letting me get it out.”
He smiled. I could feel the love in that smile. How much I needed that! Nobody knows how much I just need a smile sometimes, from someone that really cares. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “You know what you need to do now, right? You once told me that so long as you’re writing, everything always falls into place. Writing is life. Not writing is death. Remember when you told me that?”
That’s not advice I’d give everyone, but it’s the perfect advice for me. When I write, things start making sense. Ideas come to mind that otherwise wouldn’t. This is when the answers come. Of course, all of my problems are still there, but somehow, hope seems to return to my heart again once I start typing. “Thank you my friend. Thank you Durand.”
taysonjay 