The year 2019 has been a year of Hell. It has dragged me through mud I wouldn’t have survived being dragged through a decade ago, from near-fatal encounters in the wilds of Southeast Asia to the even-more-nearly-fatal month I spent in the incompetent care of China’s third-world medical system. There have even been times I’ve wondered “is it time to hang up the ‘expat dream’ and go back to America?” I left that life behind for reasons that made sense at the time (and still do), but I can’t recall many times when I even imagined that some of the nightmares I have gone through this year were even conceivable.
And if I’m being honest, those nightmares (or at least their aftermath) haven’t ended yet, though the light at the end of the tunnel is near enough now that I can attach a date to it and that date is December 15, 2019.
And today, sitting in an airport bar in Hong Kong on an 11 hour layover and drinking the most outrageously overpriced (not to mention watered-down) gin and tonic that it has ever been my misfortune to actually pay money for the right to drink, I have found myself wondering, “was it a mistake? Was it foolish to take that wild leap into the expat world back in the Fall of 2012? Even if it wasn’t, was it a mistake to dive back in, at the deep end this time, in Fall of 2014? Should I have settled down in America like a responsible adult? Is it time to do so now? Is it time to finally quit trying to scratch ends together from the meager paycheck for an unfulfilling job in a country you hate? Is it time to move on, or rather, move back?”
And by way of an answer, all I found was another series of questions.
Where are you right now? In an airport bar in Hong Kong, on the other side of the world from home.
Where were you 24 hours ago? On the beach on a South Pacific island sipping raw coconut milk with an absolutely dazzlingly beautiful Russian ex-model from my karate dojo who has me utterly wrapped around her fingers and knows it (a woman with whom I have nothing in common except a thirst or travel, a fondness for Bon Jovi and an affinity for Long Island Iced Tea, and whose most outspoken political opinion is a strong wish that the Russian Federation was as good at punishing corruption as the Soviet Union of her childhood was) as I played the knight-in-shining-armor getting ready to escort her back to the airport in Manila.
Where were you a week ago today? In a small, impoverished town on that same island in the Philippines, throwing back lambanog with my ex’s family as my son and his cousins chased each other (and a rooster got involved somehow) around the yard of the village they call home.
A month ago today? At the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, getting my second passport three years early because my first one is already so full of stamps that there’s no room for new ones.
Two months ago today? Dallas, Texas, celebrating my first homecoming in 5 years.
What have you done this year? Two weeks of volunteer charity work in the third-world, damned near lost my leg to an infection, bounced back from that to start training for the black belt exam that looms less than 16 months away, and ghost-written articles defying the second-most powerful (and third-most repressive) government in the world while living right in the shadow of its capitol building.
…I ain’t gonna lie (yes, an English teacher just typed that). Twenty-Nineteen has whipped my ass. Between hospital bills, lost wages, and travel expenses it has whipped my ass to the tune of 20,000 U.S. Greenbacks, roughly, while my income has dropped by nearly 25% due to the simultaneous collapse of China’s education budget and their currency. But then again, 6 years ago in America, I wouldn’t have had twenty grand to lose in the first place. And the plain fact is that the reason I left that life behind was that it always seemed… well, pointless.
And for the love of God, how many people back home have a life story that reads like those questions above? I mean… that guy in the Dos Equis commercials about "the most interesting man in the world" is looking at my life with raised eyebrows. There are plenty of negative things that could be said about my life, but “pointless” long ago ceased to make the list.
I think back on something the aforementioned Russian beauty said to me one evening over dinner. “[Patriam], look at that guy over there greeting customers at the door? Is there any doubt your life is better than his? What does he do? Nothing. If he wrote a book about his life, what would he put in it? Nothing. Even with problems, your life is always interesting.”
Is my life “drama-free?” Aw, Hell no! My life has more drama than the damned Emmy Awards, and that’s the point. Fuck only knows if I’m going to live to be old, and I’m pretty damned sure I’ll never get rich, but there’s going to be no doubt of this: I lived. In the past seven years I’ve grabbed life by the balls and didn’t let go even when it jizzed in my damned face. I wrote once in 2012, after that fateful whirlwind romance that culminated in a life-changing Shanghai trip, of having come to the conclusion that “what’s important in life is having a story to tell.” Well Ladies and Gents…
...I’ve got one.
And I don’t regret a minute of it.
(Originally posted to my Facebook profile for a very select group of friends on 7 October, 2019)