“–you have too good a mind to throw away. I don’t quite know what we’re doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fiber of my being. A man must live by his light and do what little he can and do it as best he can. In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.”

She is right. I will say yes. I will say yes even though I do not really know what she is talking about. – Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

I try to shut off the nostalgia lens when thinking of my two and a half years in China. Coming back to the States was something I felt obligated to do; if it were up to me, I’d still be in Wuhan, breathing in the poisonous air, drinking crates of beer, with my neverending head cold, forty pounds heavier than I am now, if not more. I can see why coming here was a good idea, and I can make myself understand this is all temporary; there will come a time when the benefits of returning begin to manifest. There may even be a time when I look back on my time in China with a slight shred of regret. There might come such a time.

But not now.

The slow eroding of any hope you had for your future is a process best endured among kindred spirits — at the office, bagging groceries, or pissing away time and money and bits of your sanity to earn a PhD, only to find yourself an overworked adjunct with no benefits. Those people are better off because they’re together.

When you endure it in isolation, there is no hiding from the truth. It’s there, staring you in the face every single day. Your failures. Where you’re going, where you’ve been, not to mention where you’ve fallen on your ass along the way.

A side effect of this is that you long for a better, simpler time. A chance to take a left instead of a right, and see if that lands you in your fabled dreamworld of the “good life”. What you left behind wasn’t so bad — hell, compared to your current situation, it was heaven. Why the fuck did you ever leave in the first place?

The point is: I’m romanticizing my life in China.

I have to take the time to remind myself that it wasn’t all dancing in the sun and shitting rainbows. For starters, what sun? Unless our fearless leaders seed the atmosphere. And as for rainbows…good luck.

I try to forge a conviction that my reasons for returning home were sound, and that since my wife worked hard to get her visa, even if we fail, it was worth a shot. Right?

And if we fail? What are the consequences for failure?

A few weeks ago I did something I have not done in a long time: I went through all my old China photos, remembering things I had forgotten about my arrival, going back down that tired road of what-could-have-been. And sometimes, right before I fall asleep, I can draw myself back to that first day, when an entire new land awaited me. That first dreary jetlagged dinner, that first cigarette, first rice wine, first rice wine hangover, and I can still see her. She is standing at the heater by the window. She is offering me a cup of tea, and she pronounces tea with a slight rhotacization, something close to tear. She looks nice. I can’t take my eyes off her.

Then I wake up to…my current life. Everything that has gone before, and everything yet to come. Where am I headed, and I have to wonder if the consequences of failure might not be consequences after all.

But a kind of reprieve.