Why are you in such a hurry, little girl?

You can’t keep running away from a world where you have no voice. That world isn’t going anywhere. The bronzer on your jawline and the shimmery powder on your eyelids aren’t going to make the blind sit up and take notice. The heels chafing at your toes and rubbing your ankles raw aren’t going to give you the platform you’ve been falsely promised.

What are you hoping for, little girl?

You read as though your books will be ripped out of your hands at any moment, you write as though you fear losing function of your hands, and when you plead for mercy of the silence that greets your words, your desperation cuts a ruthless line through your chest and bursts into the air like a flock of birds escaping a little boy with a slingshot aimed at their home. Yet when you sit down to pour it all onto paper, your colours are muted, your lines are uncertain, and the paper eventually finds its way amid the bills and the torn up to-do lists into the recycling bin.

Where are you going, little girl?

You wander the city in your best camouflage, standing out like all the other girls do. You get your hair cut short and stare superciliously down your nose at all the imagined slights you’re dealt. Your muscles strain from the quick clip at which you assault the pavement, pushing from one crisis to the next, but your mind only relaxes when you step onto a treadmill, racing to nowhere at 6 miles an hour.

Who do you want to be, little girl?

Who do you want to be, when you step off the scale and dispassionately (you think) note the 0.2 lb drop since yesterday morning, when you’ve cleaned until you’ve run the gamut of cleaning products under your sink, when the innumerable screens that litter your room finally wink off for the night, nestled in a careful imitation of order and meaning? Who are you, then?

The most remarkable thing I remember about coming to Canada is the Wal-Mart. I’d only been to a Wal-Mart once before then, when my dad drove us in the tiny second-hand Suzuki to a giant outlet mall about two hours away from where we lived. On a continent when an hour’s drive could bring you to a different country entirely, this was a Pretty Big Deal.

I had marveled at the size of the place, that first time, but even that particular retail location seemed to retain some of the austere German character of the soil upon which it was located. For one, it lacked the haphazard nature of the big box stores that we have come to associate with American hyperconsumerism. For another, it was populated with the solemn and the well-behaved and the upper-middle-class, come to wonder at this latest cultural import from across the Atlantic.

The first time we stepped into a Canadian Wal-Mart, the first thing I saw was a digital watch for a cartoon series I was really into at the time. It had been made out of cheap rubber, and came with five plastic faceplates featuring different characters from the TV show that could be switched out. The price, more than anything else, stays in my mind: $11.95.

At the exchange rate then, this translated to about $15 Deutsche Mark.

I was eleven, and my parents had decided a few years previously that I should be allowed an allowance in order to be able to properly socialize with the locals, who had a propensity to shun me already and did not need further encouragement. I received $5 every week, and apart from the occasional moment of weakness when I passed the sweets shop after school, I dutifully squirreled this money away like the good little first generation immigrant I was.

This was different, though. I’d always wanted a watch. Despite the cartoon characters that adorned this particular specimen, a watch of my own seemed charmingly grown-up…exactly the thing a precocious 11-year-old with a surplus of attitude and a deficit of affection needed to prove to the world that she ought to be taken seriously, dammit.

Remember, at the time I lived on a continent that prided itself on workmanship and luxury. In Germany, where even tourist trinkets were well-made, the concept of cheap disposable goods had not taken over yet. $15 for a watch with my favourite cartoon characters seemed like an awfully good bargain.

(Imagine my surprise when I discovered dollar stores.)

My parents made me sternly promise that I wouldn’t lose any of the faceplates (a promise I broke almost as soon as we stepped out of the store) and that I wouldn’t waste my money on anything so frivolous again anytime soon. My parents were both academics—biologists—and the thought of spending money on anything other than the absolute necessities seemed antithetical to their entire way of being. Even my love for school supplies seemed moderately offensive. 

Still, it didn’t matter that the plastic casing the watch came in crinkled dangerously in my hand, and it didn’t matter that manufacturing defects prevented all but two of the faceplates from actually switching out. This watch, my watch, seemed like it was an omen of what Canada was to bring me: freedom, as cliche as that seems. Freedom to explore, and to grow, and to live.

I have no idea where that watch is, now. I doubt it lasted beyond my first year in Canada. I became far more preoccupied with the struggles of living in an English speaking country; I hadn’t spoken a word of English before the age of ten. In typical fashion, I had also decided that bringing myself up to speed in yet another language, a language that my classmates had studied since kindergarten and that I’d only seen parodied on TV, would be the one je-ne-sais-quoi I needed to be accepted here. I started checking out French children’s books from the library, and soon forgot about my newfound trinket.

That year, and the two years following, were marked by frustration and ostracism and classmates that didn’t like me any better than my classmates in Germany had. Eventually, pride and spite and hurt pushed me to a bench at the far end of the schoolyard, protected from the petty politics of grade-schoolers by a book as big as I was.

It wasn’t until grade nine that I really settled into my own, with appropriate nerd friends and appropriate nerd classes and something resembling an identity. By then, I was so used to the timbre of life in Canada that none of it—the roadside diners, the franchised coffee shops, the oversized malls, the frigid winters—surprised me anymore.

I took my vow of citizenship the following year, and it felt more like a formality than anything. I’d thought of myself as Canadian for years already; this piece of paper seemed little more than a representation of the rights I already knew were mine. I guess in the end, that’s what every immigrant family wants for their children.

By that time, I’d already lost the recollection of the wonder I felt upon realizing that the life I’d known in Germany was as representative of the wider world as I was of your average Chinese girl. The memories of the cold politeness of my classmates were  fading away, to be replaced by a stubborn sense of certainty that this diplomat town ruling over a vast melange of multiculturalism is where I was meant to be.

I can’t begin to enumerate the naiveties of that particular point of view. I just remember restlessly sitting in the lobby of the government building after the ceremony, waiting for dad to bring the car around so my mom and my sister wouldn’t have to walk in the rain. My mom was going to take the rest of the day off, but I was dropped off at a bus terminal so I could make my way back to school for afternoon classes. I’d never lost the streak of academic competitiveness I first developed in grade 6 as a coping mechanism, and the thought of missing an afternoon of school simply because I’d changed national allegiances seemed ridiculous.

The din of people who had just gotten on at the last station settling down in their train carriage woke her daughter up. She looked up distractedly from the email she’d been reading on her phone at the tiny stirring form in the baby carrier at her feet, but it was her husband who put aside his book so he could reach down to pick their child up.

Passers-by crooned at their daughter in that way that well-meaning strangers do, exclaiming over her stuffed giraffe and her beautiful butterscotch eyes and her adorable onesie. She smiled as her daughter babbled nonsense to the delight of the entire car, and dutifully supplied answers about her daughter’s name (Lauren) and age (ten months) and temperament (adventurous to a fault).

The train had started moving again, almost imperceptibly, and her daughter struggled to escape her father’s grasp so she could clamber onto her mother’s lap and look out the window. The child batted against the window, uncomprehending of the glass that prevented her from reaching out and touching the trees moving past them at increasing speeds. Her husband still had his arms on their daughter’s waist, and so she merely rested one hand against the tiny protruding belly to prevent the child from tumbling too far forward and knocking its head on the window.

She looked up from her phone again at a particular enthusiastic clamour of her daughter’s at something that had just flown past their window, but when she looked out from her seat, her eyes looked right past the green fields and the straggling forest in the distant horizon, looking at something only she could see. In the next moment her eyes refocused and she seemed to be looking at her own reflection in the train window, at her dark hair and tasteful earrings and designer necklace.

Her husband pulled their daughter back onto his lap and tapped her on the nose, affectionately. She looked at her tiny family, its members beaming at each other, and smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

It seemed impossible that she would hear the drip drip of rainwater falling into the white bucket sitting unceremoniously on the floor above the noise in the room, but she did. It was the first thing she noticed when she pushed open the door to the second story of the local independent bar. She paused, wondering if the bouncer downstairs had misdirected her on purpose. The venue couldn’t seem more alienating if it tried.

The room was swathed in orange and blue lighting, eerie and surreal. There was some generic billboard music playing over the speakers, adding to the feeling of cacophony. She made her way to the bar and asked about the beers on tap, speaking a little too loudly in order to be heard over the radio, in order to mask the uncertainty that was creeping into her mind.

She left her beer sitting on a table in the corner of the room and her purse on the chair behind it, against all the safety rules she had ever been taught, to seek the refuge of the bathroom. The crowd that was chatting amiably on the set of couches beside her table seemed to be the opening act; surely no one would try anything this close to them?

Posters for the headlining band she had come to see tonight adorned the hallway leading to the dimly-lit bathroom. Even that seemed unsettling, somehow. The doors of the stalls, in turn, boasted an advertisement for an avant-garde play featuring the most famous person to come out of this tiny colllege town.

The shot of the homegrown actress on the oversaturated, noir-styled poster showed the A-lister at her fiercest, strong jaw pushed out in defiance and hooded eyes looking down arrogantly at the on-looker. Her tight curls faded into black on the edges of the poster, as though the actress herself were disappearing into the looming darkness.

-

When she returned to her seat at the corner table of the pub, she wondered briefly whether she should’ve thrown her jacket over her drink to make sure it wasn’t disturbed. Like that wouldn’t have made her feel even more ridiculous than she already did. She wrapped her hands around her beer and sipped, pretending to herself despite heaps of scientific evidence that she would have been able to taste any trace of rohypnol that may or may not have found its way into her drink in her absence.

Three of the men on the couch beside her got up, ostensibly to go outside to smoke. One more stood up and walked across the room to tune his instrument. The lone band-member remaining on the couch leaned back into his seat and looked around in boredom.

She started when he caught her eye and sat up straighter, embarrassed at having been caught watching him. He winked good-naturedly and ran a hand through his mop of curly hair and she blushed, despite herself. She looked away quickly and took another sip of her drink, pretending to be very interested in her cellphone. It seemed to her that he was laughing lightly, but she didn’t dare look in his direction again.

With a sigh, he leaned forward and picked up his tie off of the table in front of him. He’d purposefully left it knotted so he could simply slip it over his head now, a flash of silver contrasting starkly against his black shirt, black trousers, black jacket. There was something off-putting about the way his brilliant blue eyes never left her face as he pulled up his collar, tightened his tie, and smoothed out the creases in his shirt.

Her bare feet, toes painted a dangerous crimson, were still lightly pressed against his trouser leg. She adjusted the hem of her slight summer dress, but to her disappointment he didn’t take the bait. She was conscious of the way her head was tilted slightly to the side, the way her fingers had been reflexively tugging at her bangs, the way she kept biting her lip every time she smiled, shyly. It’s almost laughable how cliche it was.

He had leaned back in his armchair again, looking at her with a mix of indulgence and amusement. She never could hold his gaze for long, and so she picked up her coffee cup from its place on the table between them, willing the last dregs of the creamy liquid out of the bottom of the cup. She pushed her feet back into her sandals and stood up resolutely, extending a hand to signal the end of the meeting.

He met her tiny hand with a strength that took her by surprise. He stood up too then, almost pulling himself up by her hand. His other hand hovered around the small of her back as he showed her to the door, close enough for her to feel its warmth, but never quite touching.

The door closed behind her.

It’s a good day to be a palindromic age.

I was supposed to be over milestones by now. My sociology professors would tell me that it’s human nature to seek meaning in that which is inherently meaningless. The passing of days, the rotation of the earth…we are desperate to imbue these natural phenomena with some sort of greater purpose, so that we are not driven mad with nihilism.

My sociology professors would say that, but then, I’ve always believed I could transcend human nature by pure rationality. It’s a little arrogant, I admit.

I think I expected to be happier, by now. If you asked the sixteen-year-old me what she envisioned for her barely more mature self, she would probably have envisioned a small but cozy apartment, a tight clique of friends with similar interests and disparate personalities, weekends strolling to the bookstore and picking up a guilty pleasure read on a whim, or else checking out that latest art gallery installation. She wouldn’t have imagined days when it was difficult to get out of bed, or nights when it was difficult to stop crying. She wouldn’t have envisioned weeks and weekends of barely enough sleep to survive, pushing through to finish just one more project for just one more class that she couldn’t care less about if she tried.

We never really do imagine that, when we think of the future.

I think the sixteen-year-old me would have been intimidated if she met me, today. Intimidated by the aloofness, and the unforgiving idolization of intellect, and the imitation of maturity. But a little disdainful, too, because even at sixteen I would have recognized the jadedness that I now call second nature for the fraud it was. Is.

At sixteen I made a document of a hundred and one things I wanted to do in a thousand and one days. Learn Japanese. Learn ASL. Learn how to play Bridge. Get a driver’s license. Don’t procrastinate for a whole week. Hold someone’s hand. Write a comic strip. Get a tattoo.

The list is painful to read. Not because most of the things were never accomplished—that I resigned myself to long ago—but because I was once naive enough to believe that the same things I cared about at sixteen would be the same things I cared about at nineteen. I guess the adults were right about this one.

About a month later, I wrote a list of one hundred facts about myself as an exercise for a diary entry. I guess I was feeling introspective that winter. 

The self-recrimination that wafts through those particular pages is practically toxic.

Part of me wants to reach through the years to that (stereotypically) angry and bitter teenager and tell her that everything will be okay. The other part of me wants to laugh at my hypocrisy, because things aren’t okay, not when okay is defined by two pills, taken once daily, do not mix with alcohol.

But you know, things aren’t bad, either. They’re not a teenager’s idle daydreams, but they’re okay. And sometimes, even when I don’t have an iron-fisted control over everything in my life, things turn out alright. Eventually.

I guess that’s the thing I’m trying to teach myself, these days.

Fold away the safety net, boys, she’s walking this one the hard way.

I rolled out of bed, feeling distinctly undignified as I let my feet settle onto the threadbare carpet. The bedsheets beckoned for my return with the remnant of body heat, but a feverish restlessness propelled me into the chilled air of my quarters with nothing more than my dressing gown, cast aside unceremoniously onto the wooden chair beside my bed two days earlier.

My hair hung limp, barely disturbed despite restless dreams of unscrupulous solicitors and disapproving tutors; I drove my small wooden comb through the wispy strands out of habit more than necessity and pinned it up out of the way. Unfashionable, but it would have to do. The eyes that were reflected back at me in the looking glass were distant and unfocused, as though the mind to which they belonged were still reluctantly engaged in Morpheus’ grip.

I’d slept barely three hours after thirty hours of waking, much of it spent grappling with academic material as bland as it was pedantic. Though it had been barely dusk when I awoke for the first time, I had been rather more interested in disappearing into unconsciousness for another spell than in indulging the pangs of hunger that were beginning to throb gently in my belly.

Instead, my eyes had fallen on a volume sitting on my bedside table…an old favourite that I hadn’t revisited in some time, discovered serendipitously in a friend’s attic weeks before.

I never was able to resist the allure of words when the opportunity presented itself. By the time my eyes protested from the continued strain of reading by the dying daylight, I was surprised to find myself two-thirds through the tale, and mentally relaxed, if physically still exhausted. 

I scrutinized the face opposite mine in the mirror, then, wondering what the heroes and heroines of my ignominious novels would have made of me. For a moment I fancied that my shoulders possessed something of the feline grace that was often alluded to in this particular volume; I rolled my shoulders back self-consciously, not realizing till a moment later that I had done so. I even imagined that my eyes, weary in the way only a young person’s eyes could be, betrayed a hint of the sharply honed analytical skills that I had come to admire so, even as I acknowledged internally that the feats of deduction that amazed secondary characters and readers alike would have been impossible—improbable—in the unforgiving solidity of the real world.

The moment passed, and I was, once again, myself, or as much myself as a young twenty-something set free from the strictures of filial obligations for the first time could be.

People always think of pain as being violent, somehow. People think about artists who unleash their sorrow onto the canvas, and they think of aggressive splashes of colour, splattered with willful carelessness onto the off-white fabric. They envision explosive illustrations, figures contorted in misery and desperately seeking a way out, figuratively dying before their appraising eyes.

But pain is so very rarely violent. Violence implies energy, an active force. Violence implies agency, a desire to correct some injustice somehow. Pain…is quiet. It’s the softly shaking shoulders, the clenched fist pressed to eye sockets, the arms wrapped around the torso guarding in vain against the cold seeping through every inch of skin. It’s staying in bed for days with the phone turned off, mindlessly flipping through books that don’t matter, hoping life would just go. away. dammit.

There are no splashes of colour, only a sullen avoidance of art, of anything that could be a reminder of reality. There are no contorted figures railing against the heavens, merely blank eyes that look but don’t see, a body that is going through the motions, willing itself to stay upright for just one more day. There are no explosions, just a voice buried somewhere deep that wants to scream but has forgotten how.

In a way, it would be easier if it were violent. Even self-destructive violence at least gets you somewhere. Pain…well, pain just watches you wither into nothing, impassively, and walks away.

As the silence dragged on she found her mind wandering, wondering. Why is it called a pregnant pause? Was there some sort of expectation or guarantee that a prolonged period of not talking would result in a resolution of some sort? If that were true, why didn’t Congress just try shutting up for a couple of weeks?

Unconsciously she picked at her cuticles with her nails, rendering the already rough skin even more ragged, as she contemplated this new political system. Would they give her a suite in the White House if she wrote in to propose this daring idea? Dear Mr. President…

She knew she was meant to be carefully considering his words, and that he was still looking at her expectantly, waiting for a response. She knew that if he could read her mind right then, he would be…well, he probably wouldn’t even bother getting mad. He’d probably just walk out.

It was hard to focus her mind on what he had said, however, when she was busy reforming the country’s administration. It was so much easier and so much more fun than dealing with the reality that had been harshly pushed in front of her face.

The track wasn’t very well encoded. It sounded like it had been re-recorded from a scratched up CD using nothing more advanced than a discount laptop from the local electronics superstore and a mic discovered at the bottom of a drawer that hadn’t been cleared out in a year. Somehow, though—through some magical combination of acoustics, ambient noise, and sleep deprivation—the music coming through the equally questionable earphones didn’t sound as though it were traveling down a thin and fraying wire to reach the tiny audio drivers. Rather, it sounded…it felt like the music was all around him, pouring out from the walls and pausing perfunctorily at the plastic buds pushed into his ears before easily flowing past the obstruction into his unprotected mind.