Departure and Arrival

I love you like loving something between shadow and light, as Bart's favorite poet Nerudar has written. Well, I feel like living between shadow and light right now, due to jet lagg from my swift trip home.

This trip is different from all the previous ones, those are for fleeing, for fear and validation, this is for facing up, for lifting the weight, that I have been carrying, under which I could not love the way I should, everyone included, even myself.

I don't ever remember my mother and I sit there talking like that, like friends, like long lost friends, like two women who can finally share their secrets, equally, closer than ever.

She told me the story of the numerous miscarriges, premature babies, or mature babies never having a chance. The little girl who was not helped with a breath just because she was the second girl that she bore for my father. Another girl!? my paternal grandmother grunted, and my mother did not see the baby again after she was taken from her arms. Crule story that happened in the remote rural areas in China decades ago.

I have had it easier. I have been lucky. Were I born in those rural areas, I might have never existed in this world, or sitting here, typing these words, feeling the pain and love. Yet I was born in Beijing, where doctors know what they need to do to make a baby to draw the first breath properly, even I was a third girl in a son-starving family. I survivied, not some of my sisters or brothers who came before me. Someting I did not ask for.

None of us asked to be born, so life is a gift, no matter what you say otherwise, no matter how much pain or regret that we feel sometime that can torn us into pieces, life is a gift when we can laugh and be witty and positive.

Life is really a gift when it is free of lies and secrets. I told my mother how I had not been happy for a long time with my old life, something I never fully revealed to them before for fear of burdening them. How I have lost myself until recent years, how I still want to continue live my life here in this city faraway from them, a city that is my home now. And I feel good of saying it without guilt.

And I told her more about the man I loved all these years, someone I could have loved better. Someone who has chosen to be distant from me in the past year, rightfully. But I don't feel lonely anymore after having loved him and being loved the way we did, the way I still do. Maybe I was not mature enough to keep it before, but I was surely lucky enough to have had it.

She said I just want you to be happy, there or here. So go live your life. We finally had our moment, at the beginning of this new year. I suddenly realized how strong she is. I have always thought she is the weak one between the two of them. I got it wrong. My father was the one that got taken care of, needs being satisfied, wishes being granted, being admired and enjoyed more. Yet my mother carried the weight of the whole family and did not bend.

I never felt very connected to my mother before, in this relationship, I am opaque, guarded and even a little condesending. I always feel I share a better connection with my father, and subsequently close down to her. Yet now, I draw from her strength that I know I can rely on while being true to them and myself, for she had had real pain of loss and she remained strong and committed and hopeful.

Weigth lifted, secrets gone. I never felt better, more peaceful, more loving. I have been fighting a self defeating battle to be someone I am not, to perform duties and put up shows that I draw upon myself to avoid hard and true communications or confrontations. I was weak and negative. And I underestimated the strength of them and I have not trusted them enough before.

I will still be that girl who take care them as much as she can eomotionally and financially, but she will take care of her self first, to be a happy and loving woman first. And it has to start from here and now.

And for the first time I have felt we finally love and respect each other like equals. I am no longer a daughter or kid, hiding some secrets for fear of being scolded or punished.

Getting on the plane back to JFK, a 14 hour flight. I am leaving this hometown again. I always do since I am 18. And this time, I felt peaceful and happy with this departure, not feeling guilty.



For life is really a gift because we can live it the way we want it to, not according to any expectations or pre programmed footprint. Life is about that freedom to leave, to change, to exicise the options of choosing a different path. I wish I knew this before. But we can only learn this fast.



And it is not that I have to leave, it is just I have found a life for myself elsewhere, and I can not stay and be happy.



I put on my ear phone, listening to the IPOD. I think I hear laughters of babies, those that could belong to those sisters and brothers that have not been able to grow up. But when they are up there, I hope they see me living the life for them, not wasting it, not waiting it out, not hating it, and be happy for me and rest in peace themselves.



I am again flying a long trip by myself, this time I don't have you to visit after I landed for you keep the distance. But I am confident and determined, and peaceful and loving.



This is my life and it only needs me to be a complete and happy one. All of you, those I have loved, will be in my heart, never far. But the effort of trying and the joy of living shall be mine only. Like yours will be just yours. If we share, it becomes more. If we don't, it is still beautiful by itself. We should all be set free even when we are together. We don't complete each other, we are complete.



My New Year starts with another trip across Pacific ocean and the vast land of the north American. Only this time, it is simple and true and mellow. So much so that the 14 hours is no longer unbearable, for I am not anxious for anything, I am just living my life.



This will be the golden pig year, I shall wear red, a smile and lipsticks, and nothing even remotely close to rage or negativity or guilt.



A risky resolution to be put out here, but hey, if I could not make it perfect, it is still my life, isn't it. So I win either way. That, is what I wil call, a right attitude.



And I read it somewhere that man will take a big ass over bad attitude at any time, so it is important life lesson for a girl to have a right attitude, for the sake of man or not, even I don't have a big ass--yoga or pilate class is in order, for both the right attitude and the right ass.

And did I say, I do miss you presence beteween this shadow and light, your stories that make me laugh. They still do.