An emotional breakdown, averted, in three parts: Part 3

My handwriting was unusually neat. 


I typically write in a careless, unreadable scrawl that says "I might have a neurological disconnect between my brain and my hand." It makes love notes written by me less cute and more murderous, in a "maybe I wrote this by the light of the moon while perched in a tree outside your window, that's why it's so sloppy" kind of way. Once, I drew an adorable picture and wrote a note to send with someone on a plane. When he finally opened it up on the plane to read, the guy next to him asked, "Goodbye note from the kids?" That's a true story. 


Yesterday's handwriting though was a careful mix of cursive and print. The cursive said "I don't have time to pick up my pen, I've got things to say!", while the print said "I'm not so pretentious as to use only cursive. (Also, lowercase b's are hard.)"


I thought that, if my handwriting was neat, my thoughts would be neat too. That the words would know I was trying to take care of them, trying to treat them well, trying to make sense of them and to free them onto paper. I thought that the nasty, scary, mean words that I wanted to write (mostly aimed at myself), wouldn't seem so awful if they looked nice on the page. The spiky 't' in the word 'guilty' (as in, "I feel guilty that...", a common phrase I write in my journal) would look less like a cross that I was martyring myself upon if I made sure the proportions of the letters were pretty and the 'y' next to it was more loopy and less pointy.


Did the shape and curls and slant of my letters really have the power to make me feel better? Obviously not. But, in taking time to write (rather than scrawling the first words that came to mind), I described my feelings in a thoughtful, careful way.


By the time I ended, I had written five pages, my feelings broken down into six numbered categories. Just as I learned in the movie Inside Out (shout out to the 9-year-old who made me watch it while babysitting him and then chastised me for crying!), no one feeling existed alone; each was twisted intricately with another. "I am excited that..." gave way two lines later to "but it also scares me because...". Somewhere down the page "I'm so disappointed in myself for..." carried on seamlessly into "at the same time I recognize how great it is that..."


Every bit of loneliness I've felt this summer has allowed me to feel gratitude for moments of connection and laughter. Victories in being able to communicate (in rudimentary Arabic! in long-forgotten Chinese!) are more joyful because I was certainly struggling just the day before. Sadness over missing my family reunion this summer reminds me how lucky I am to have a family reunion on the calendar every single year. Scraped knees, lost keys, wet bags, overpriced food, traffic jams, and stomach aches, when put into perspective, are small inconveniences for all the blah, blah, blah rewards of travel. 


And I don't say blah, blah, blah because I'm out of touch and unable to recognize the privilege of travel. I say blah, blah, blah because, again, I'm having trouble putting into words all that I feel right now about the blessing and challenge this summer has been. I feel like I'm going to cry, again, but this time out of happiness. 


The emotional breakdown I warded off yesterday was born out of frustration and brokenness and guilt. It was avoided out of recognition that (a) I'm only human, (b) my feelings are justified, and (c) I can only let myself be affected by those things that I can control (which is very little). 


When I finally closed my notebook and placed it back in my bag, I stood up to find the heavy weight was gone (though, to be fair, I'd lost a lot of blood to mosquitoes in the last 45 minutes, so maybe that's why I felt lighter). I walked with a bounce in my step and smiled at the woman who had finally finished slurping her noodles. I walked and wandered and found myself on a street I'd heard of but never visited. I took in the neon lights and thought about how Beijing has changed since I was here in 2010 (babies wear diapers now! you can buy tampons anywhere!); I thought about how I had changed since I was here in 2010 (uhhh... a lot! more than I can easily write in two exclamations!) Tiananmen Square loomed before me and I shuffled along with a crowd of people, dodged selfie sticks, and marveled at how so much of my summer, left up to chance and prayers, had fallen into place. 


The emotional breakdown that I know will come on September 12th (and 13th and 14th, probably. really, as long as you'll indulge me), will be born out of gratitude: immense, inexpressible, all-consuming gratitude. Gratitude for people who have walked beside me this summer, who have emotionally and physically supported me, who have listened to me on FaceTime for hours on end, who have opened their homes to me, who have given me their beds, who have read my words and sent messages of encouragement, who have asked about me and sent well-wishes through my loved ones. That emotional breakdown will be born out of exhaustion - from living out of a backpack and walking everywhere (in order to save money for pastries) and from sharing a room with strangers: strangers who became great friends and strangers who snored a lot and remained strangers. That emotional breakdown will reflect my sadness that the summer is over, my happiness to see friends and family again, and my immense disbelief that I'm actually starting grad school (and terror that I'll be the stupidest one in my class.)



That emotional breakdown will be welcomed, with relief, because it feels good to feel everything. That's how I know I haven't taken anything for granted.