Qingming
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Before You Read
Content Warning
This piece contains candid descriptions of a family member's serious illness, loss within a family, self-loathing, dissociation, and thoughts of self-harm. It may be distressing. Please consider your own emotional state before reading.
From the Heart
I wrote this over the course of a night. What began as a record became an outpouring of emotion. Nothing has been prettified, dressed up, or polished. It's a stream of consciousness, a way of expressing what I was like on the edge of breaking down. It isn't an inspirational essay, and it offers no solutions. But it is real.
This isn't the end. It's just one bout of tears.
The Piece Itself
I didn't go home for Qingming, the festival for remembering the dead. The reason… is simple, and a little self-indulgent: going home last time left me too disappointed.
Last time, I rushed back, carved out a weekend, ran home. Grandma had just had a dose of targeted therapy. She was weak, lying in hospital, still unable to speak. The treatment wasn't working.
Dad was busy, and so was my aunt. No one came to pick me up. A classmate's dad drove me to the hospital. I saw Grandma just once; she was asleep, and I didn't want to disturb her.
…Then I lay in bed the whole time, because I didn't know what I could do. Dad and my aunt didn't ask me to go see Grandma at the hospital. Out of weekend habit, every time I woke up, it was already noon. I didn't visit her in the afternoon either. I could only try video-calling her. Of course, she didn't answer: she was weak and needed sleep.
I didn't know what going home was for.
During that visit, I spoke fewer than ten sentences. That sounds exaggerated, but it's true.
I buried myself in building my blog and deploying servers, busy from morning to night, barely speaking to anyone at home.
Then it was time, and I went back to university.
My grandparents did see me off, actually, and Dad drove me to the high-speed rail station in the end. I should be grateful.
But I didn't know what going home was for…
Before Qingming, I hadn't kept an eye on tickets. In what felt like an instant, all the high-speed trains home were sold out.
There were still tickets for regular trains. But I didn't buy one.
Because I didn't want to go home. It's simple. I didn't want to go home anymore.
You've simply realized that even if you step through that door, the place won't automatically become your refuge.
You won't automatically become “the child” again. No one will ask “What's wrong?” or “How have you been?”
Qingming is meant to be a day of remembrance and connection.
But if the connection itself has already rotted away, remembering only makes the wound hurt again.
So it's just because I'm no longer a child, is that it?
There's nowhere left where I can be a child, is there?
…I feel so helpless.
When ice, a senior student, heard I wasn't going home for Qingming, he asked why. I just said, “Things are a bit difficult at home. I want to save the fare”…
He was kind. He told me the university offered temporary hardship grants and that I could apply.
My student counselor and the class welfare representative were kind too. I asked, and then I qualified for a grant.
…But I keep thinking that this money is only going to improve my own life.
I even feel a little undeserving. Isn't it absurd to use my family's hardship to get a subsidy for myself?
The money will only go into my account. It won't buy Grandma's medicine.
I know perfectly well that my grandparents would want me to eat properly, at least not to hesitate over the cost of a bowl of rice.
But I feel—it's just how I feel—that… I don't deserve it.
Whenever I think about these things or write them down, I cry. Completely beyond my control.
It just still hurts. If it stops hurting one day, maybe that's when I should see a doctor.
Qingming… I realize it's been five years, or four, since I went back to our ancestral hometown? At least, I haven't gone back for Qingming.
This year I didn't even go home.
Grandpa says Grandma isn't going to get better.
I'm scared. Very, very scared.
Because if Grandma leaves too, my one anchor in this world will cease to exist.
…She raised me from the time I was a baby.
Yes, Grandma. Only Grandma. Not even Grandpa counts. Let alone my father and mother.
To me, Grandma is the only one, the closest person I have.
I video-called her on Qingming and finally got through.
She looked at me, but didn't speak. Though she couldn't speak anymore, anyway.
But she was crying. Clearly crying, trying to hide it, but I could tell at a glance.
I smiled. Smiled and asked why she was crying—I'd only missed a visit home, had that really upset her so much?
But I was crying too. After the call, I cried from eight at night until three in the morning.
…I didn't call her a second time that Qingming. There was no point.
She was about to have another injection of targeted therapy. More weakness. More sleep.
Will she get better? Nobody knows. I don't know either.
Grandma has lived her whole life in cancer's shadow. A second cancer, without that fierce need to hold on for me—I don't know. I don't dare think about it.
Qingming carries too much weight as a festival. Life and death meet there.
That's why I think so much…
I don't know whether next Qingming I'll return to our ancestral hometown to burn incense for the only person I have.
I hope not. Never.
But if I don't prepare myself, my world will collapse.
…Collapse until not even rubble remains.
Then I'll truly be on my own.
…Because there'll be no home left.
I'm not of age yet. I'm not an adult.
I've never wanted so badly not to become one.
I don't know how to live well.
I've written about “cherishing the people in front of you.” I've tried to talk myself into acceptance.
I've even used broken dreams to construct a simulated world for myself.
But now it's really going to happen. It's right here.
I don't know how to live well.
That childish wish I had when I was little was, at its core, a wish to “go first.”
Even as a child, I couldn't bear parting, so I came up with the most absurd idea: be the one to leave first.
I thought growing up would change that.
But this sort of thing, this way of thinking, doesn't change just because you get older.
It's a projection of something fundamental in a person's mind.
So, somehow, I'm still thinking it now.
Even if I no longer let it show.
Accept it, accept it. All I can do is accept it.
I can't change anything. How sad.
Nor could I change anything, even if I had the ability.
I can't even be optimistic.
I can pretend, but I know
my pessimism has seeped into my heart.
Every time I think about it, my heart hurts terribly.
It suddenly occurs to me that all this talking, all this thinking, does nothing.
I know my world is about to collapse,
yet I still haven't built myself a new, real world.
I can only live in a world made of thoughts.
I'm even considering building a cocoon and burying myself in it forever.
I can only lie here.
Forever incapable of action, waiting to break down and die.
Aha. Here comes the self-loathing again.
A burst of dissociation.
And again I wonder why my body hasn't died yet.
This is where my dissociation comes from.
I can't move anymore.
I can't change myself anymore.
I can't convince myself to tutor, to get a part-time job. Why?
My mind asks me why. Why don't you do it?
Yes. Why? Why can't I?
No answer. I can't give an answer.
I want to throw up. I feel so close to suffocating.
I hate my own helplessness. I need to sentence myself to punishment.
There's no redemption left.
I don't want to offer myself redemption anymore.
Keep sinking to the bottom. Drown. The best arrangement.
Accept it, then stain myself black, become someone I don't recognize.
Then admit I'm about to have no home.
Admit these are all restrictions I've placed on myself.
Admit I'm this awful a person.
Then wait for some day, when it ends.
It's daylight. Five in the morning. Birdsong. This year's Qingming is already over.
Still alive. I'm still alive.
I'm still alive.