Actually, with hindsight I'm not so sure that I have gained anything. I know that I'm hurting emotionally, physically, mentally and financially, but I'm struggling to identify anything positive that has come from this situation. However that's what we keep telling ourselves, isn't it? If we've been through the mill there's got to be something to show for it.
No pain, no gain.
I'm writing this entry partly to get it straight in my own head, but also to serve as a note of caution for anyone who is thinking about making a similar move. True: my situation was entirely my own and many people would be unaffected by similar circumstances. But the way in which the whole thing unravelled still took me by surprise. I had taken every possible consideration into account—or so I thought. I signed a 6-months contract (not a year!). I have travelled extensively since I was nineteen, have lived in foreign countries, have been separated from friends and family for prolonged periods since early childhood and—quite frankly—I thought the workload would be a great deal heavier than it actually was. I should have been prepared for it. There is no reason why I should not have succeeded, aside from my own shortcomings and assumptions. And it's the latter that turned out to be the killer.
Three words summarise the reasons for my failure. These three little words reinforce each other and lead a merry dance, but there is a clear hierarchy among them. Conversely, tackling either of these three issues may have helped to alleviate my circumstances, but as it turned out each spin and twirl left me more dizzy than before, sucking me in further, until I was looking down a spiral stairway to hell. I had no choice but to leave.
The three words in question are: Isolation, Anxiety and Alienation.
Isolation
This is one to watch, and I did. I was not the only foreign teacher at the school (check). There was a lively expat scene in the town which would do as a fall-back (Tuesday quiz nights: check). There was a link to a Mandarin training institute on the school's website where plenty of Westerners went to learn Chinese (check assumptions!). I was going to share a flat with another teacher (ditto!).
It's not the first time that I fell into this particular pitfall. As it turned out, everybody was already nicely settled (with the possible exception of my flatmate). We weren't a merry bunch setting out to teach and learning Chinese together. I was the latecomer.
As to the flatshare: it's generally a bad idea. Just because I once enjoyed a blissful spring and summer sharing a flat as a postdoc with like-minded professionals of my own age does not mean that I should have forgotten what a bad idea it really is. On top of the loneliness that comes with living on my own—except that I only had one room to be lonely in—I got dealt a course of 'reverse therapy' about the tribulations of living in China, which did nothing to help my mental state. I listened to the almost nightly barrage because a) I was glad to have somebody talk to me—about anything, and b) I thought I might help my flatmate to adjust, but it wasn't he who needed adjustment.
To add insult to injury, this endeavour ended up costing me as much as if I had stayed in the business hotel that I first booked into for the entire month (my flatmate didn't have the readies for his share of the rent and on top of that I had to buy a desk to write on, a set of sheets and somewhere to put my clothes as well as pay for the dubious internet). Tellingly, it wasn't until today that I realised what it actually cost me. But I missed that hotel room the entire time I was in Hangzhou because it had an internet connection, and that meant Skype.
As it were, there was plenty of time to brood. Because it was so dire in the flat, I forced myself to go out to eat, but I was on my own. It wasn't just the unrelenting heat that soon cost me my appetite. It just seemed easier not to bother.
Anxiety
Isolation breeds anxiety. There is too much time to think. Low level depression affects sleep (to be honest, the noisy aircon didn't help), and who enjoys eating out alone?
Anxiety is my old enemy. I know what it feels like when you can't face leaving your own house. It can affect people even at home. I have never let it beat me, but it takes a lot to manage it; it's too easy to let things slip. Too easy to avoid facing the reluctance of going out and finding food on the streets, in China.
It takes a lot of nerve to survive in a foreign country. In all of my years of solo travel, feeding myself in countries where I can't speak the language or stand a gnat's chance of reading the script has always been my biggest recurring challenge.
Only this time I thought I would have help. Assumptions again.
My anxiety did not get out of hand this time. It crept up on me, but I fought it. I'm happy to say that it was the one of the three issues that I managed to contain right until the end, although it was always there, rearing its ugly head the moment I thought it had subsided.
Alienation
Anxiety breeds alienation. Alienation and hatred are emotions that emanate from fear. We cower, then we snarl and fight back. My flatmate's rants were ringing in my ear every single day during my last four weeks. And I in turn started to regard many things as unreasonable (although the Hangzhou commuter buses really are unreasonable!). I wanted to shut myself away, and I did so on my days off. On my last day off I went in search of a Western bar (BBQ in the beer garden, followed by English Corner? Sounds good!) only to discover that it was still off-season. I was the only foreigner there. The fact that I had seen a grand total of six foreigners during my first week—three of whom I worked with—might have served as a hint.
I was alone, but I was not immersed in my surroundings, nor did I have a way in. I was walking around in an alien town on an alien planet, wondering how to get the hell out. Even if it meant doing the whole transition thing in reverse.
And in the end, that was all that I could do.
No comments:
Post a Comment