Last Day / First Day / 127 days / 6 days

Today is my last day at my kindergarten, my last day with my absolute menace of an employment agency, and, as it so happens with last days, the first day of my new life.

My stomach is tight, it was hard to eat my lunch. I sat with my noodles and salad getting cold in front of my open laptop, trying to fill in my Hong Kong Chinese embassy application for a new Chinese work visa. I contemplated the questions it was asking me. Who is inviting me to come to China? Do I have any diseases? Where are my parents now? Where was I five years ago? Who’s paying for my travels?

I select “self” as I think about the prices I’ve paid for my travels through life, the many times I’ve leaped before I looked, the way I am out here with no safety net to speak of. No real relationship with family, no real savings to speak of. The overpriced last minute flights I booked for two days from now, the way I wrecked my hormonal and digestive health dieting and binge eating, the joy soaring through my heart as I run down a trail with my knee hurting with every step. Me. I’m paying for my travels.

My agency put two options in my contract for the end of my time with them. I can either a) renew my contract, or b) leave China. They won’t cooperate in transferring my work permit to my next job, a situation my new job’s HR has never seen before. My new job, teaching tenth grade English Literature, is waiting for me, but I have to leave China and re-enter on new work visa in order to start. A trip to the Chinese embassy in Hong Kong awaits me, but I can’t go yet, there’s one more paper I still need.

Turns out, there’s always one more paper I need. The beaurecratic road has been long and agonizing. Many documents, trips to various offices, health checks, ultrasounds, blood draws, urine samples, hefty sums of money paid for fingerprints, background checks, photos taken, meetings held, copies printed, thousands upon thousands of messages sent, responded to, forwarded, bookmarked, screenshotted, and on and on and on.

I’m leaving work an hour early today to go to my appointment at the Civic Center to apply for a 30 day temporary stay permit to cover the gap between the expiration of my residence and work permits this weekend and the time when my z-visa is granted, after which I then need to go on to file for and process my next set of residence and work permits.

Somewhere in between all of these things I need to move out of my apartment and into the high school’s staff apartments (no more paying rent I am legit screaming), register with the police station notifying them of my move, and maybe do some traveling and vacationing during my three weeks of summer vacation. A two day hike in Yunnan Province I’ve been meaning to do since last summer is first on the itinerary. I’m leaving Sunday (two more days!) and coming back with just hours before the Civic Center closes on Friday afternoon. It’ll be a mad dash from the plane to a cab and off to the civic center. That’s if my stay permit is processed in time. It may not be, and in the famous last words of all the type-A impulse driven road-running energy bunny escape artists of the world, I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.

I still haven’t gotten my period. My period tracker app says my period is 126 days late. I scroll social media looking at “how to fix your hormones” accounts advertising their programs with my overdrawn US bank accounts burning a hole in my mind. 听说 my new job can pay part of my salary directly into my US account, which would be absolutely lifesaving for my brain, burnt-out from negotiating a never ending list of soul-draining beaurecratic tasks. I know I could remit money to myself through an app, but I tried it and couldn’t get through the real-name authentication process. I could remit to myself directly with my Chinese bank, but I have to fill out a few forms with my US bank information and make sure I remit the appropriate taxes in advance and honestly the whole process sounds like a lot.

The process of large and small administrative tasks stretches a mile long. In order to do the one thing I want to do, I have to first do this other thing, but first I have to handle this one other thing in order to do that, and in order to do that I first have to do this. On and on and on. Having so many tabs open in my brain is draining. I was the kind of kid who did their homework early and forgot to hand it in. Out of sight, out of mind.

For the first time, I am going to be between jobs in China. Many of my Chinese friends have quit jobs and been unemployed for some time, coasting or moving home to save money. 闲一下吧。 I don’t have the luxury of 闲 — free time. I am on a work permit. I need to be working or I will lose my right to be in the country. But now, for these three weeks, I am truly free, not beholden to anyone. The feeling is wildly different than the safety of going on vacation and coming back to a known job. This feels wild and raw. It’s as though I’ve been spinning in a washing machine for a year and a half and the drum finally stopped spinning. I stumble out of the machine, blinking, soaking wet but washed clean.

After work I go to the civic center, cancel my work permit, apply for my stay permit. Photos, screenshots, texts. I follow the agency representative back to the agency office, chatting with him in Chinese. He asks me where I am going to work next year. I hesitate around a ball of suspicion and fear but decide to tell him anyway. I’ve already put my new school’s HR in touch with the agency, the cat is out of the bag. I tell him high school English Language Arts. He tells me high school 压力很大. Yes, I imagine the pressure will be 很大. I don’t know if I’m ready for it. I imagine the kids breaking me on the first day, seeing through me. Whispers going around the classroom turning louder and louder. Finally someone stands up and shouts, finger pointed “you’re not a real teacher!”. I wave my hands against the dark catastrophic cloud. Thank you, brain, for always trying to protect me from danger. I take a deep breathe and continue the conversation.

At the office we sign termination forms. The agency will pay me my last month’s salary as well as my contracted flight reimbursement. We speak Chinese. Everyone seems very human now, there’s so much less stress and distrust. I snap candid photos of the office to remember it by. The school desks made as a mock-up for training new teachers. The view of the tall pink skyscrapers from the window that shocked and awed me when I first saw them my first days in China. The company name and logo on the door as I leave. Emotion wells up in my chest and pricks behind my eyes. Relief, sadness, both light and heavy at the same time. Goodbye, thank you.

I haven’t eaten since a very light lunch. I am aware of my hunger but the stress of the day is keeping my stomach clenched tight. I can’t eat. I need to dispel the energy buzzing through my body. I decide on the gym. I’ll squeeze my emotions out through my muscles. I’ll sweat the anxiety out through my pores. I text my trainer and ask if he’s free. I don’t want to think, I just want to move. He’s got an 8pm slot. Late, but I’ll take it. I grab a banana from a shop on the way home and eat it. I think about how this is going to spike my blood sugar, how I should have vinegar and vegetables first. I notice how food rules and mental restriction are creeping their way back into my mind. How do I balance eating intuitively with healing my disrupted hormones?

I go home, change for the gym, and realize I am actually quite hungry. I have a highly eclectic girl dinner of fruit, sauerkraut, leftover chicken breast, and 零食 (I love this word in Chinese, ling shi, it literally means zero food, or junk food) snacks from the last day of school party at the kindergarten. Crackers, candy, tangyuan. The tangyuan are too sugary, despite the black sesame tasting good at first. I immediately have an averse reaction. My throat feels coated in sweetener and my stomach feels sick. My brain starts down a well-run track. We should binge. What else can you eat? What else do you have in the house? Want ice cream? How about chocolate and peanut butter? Now’s the chance, you’ve opened the door just give in. I take a breath. Thank you brain for trying to take care of me and make me feel good. I appreciate the suggestions but I know eating more sugar right now will feel bad in my body and so I am not going to do that. I drink a glass of water. I go to the gym.

My trainer runs me through chest and arms. I feel powerful and strong, fueled. I am grateful I ate dinner and didn’t try to workout on fumes. We chat between sets, he shows me videos of his son running around in a small village, home for the summer with his in-laws, catching fish that were electrocuted and stunned in the water so they are easy for a five year old to pick up and put in his net. It makes me sad. I think about the people in the village who need to earn money to live. I think about children watching nature documentaries feeling bad for the gazelle but never the lion who will die without his kill. I smile and say his kid is cute and he looks happy. He tells me again as he does every rep, chest up, shoulders back and down, push.

We work biceps next. He rubs under my arms and tells me I still have a lot of fat granules on the backs of my arms. It’s not good, he says. This is the second time he’s brought it up. The first time I didn’t say anything. This time I open my mouth. “Why are you bringing this up? I’ve never noticed them before, you can’t see them by looking whatsoever, I already have so many negative thoughts about my body and you adding to it is not helpful.” He replies, “they don’t have any effect whatsoever on your body, don’t worry about them”. “Ok”, I say, “so don’t keep bringing it up then”. I half want to cry, half want to scream.

We move on to triceps. I can’t let it go. The gym is covered in mirrors. I say it directly. The monster that claws at me from inside my chest every day. I want to give it a way out. “I still feel like I am a bit too fat”. He replies immediately “you’re not fat!”. “真的吗？“， “真的”， he says. He notices every ounce I lose and gain and he says it, so I trust he’s telling me the truth. I grab the rope and pull.

It’s nearly ten o’clock by the time I get home. I am exhausted in the best way. I stay up another hour needlessly scrolling on my phone for no reason, under the pretext that I’m relaxing, knowing I need to be asleep, knowing I should likely be journaling, breathing, doing gentle bedtime yoga, brushing my teeth, anything. I go to sleep. It’s been five weeks since I stopped dieting and started started eating intuitively. Since then I’ve binged three times, all three triggered by insomnia.

I woke up at 6am to a typhoon raging outside, the sky darker than I’ve ever seen daytime sky in Shenzhen. I made myself breakfast, salmon and eggs with sauerkraut, steamed broccoli, and salad with generous portions of oil and a flaxseed and pumpkin seed dressing. Flax and pumpkin as part of a seed cycling protocol to address my hormones. Fats to support female hormone production. Fermented foods for gut health. Eggs because I am leaving tomorrow and need to clear out the fridge. Salmon because I love it. Salad even though it’s weird because I am on a genuine kick and my body is craving it.

It’s been 127 days since my last period, and 6 days since my last binge.