One Last Time

I went into Fujisawa today and emptied my Japanese bank account down to the last yen. Most of it went into a transfer to my American bank account while I withdrew a bit to have some cash for my last 24 hours in Japan. And honestly it being the "last" is throwing me for a loop.

I guess it felt less consequential back in July. I knew I was coming back, and I wanted to. Now, I don't really want to come back, but it's also difficult to go.

I ran into my coworker I've had both semesters on the train. She was on her way to a hotel near the airport as they do that if your flight is early in the morning. Mine isn't until basically the evening.

The courier came to get my two suitcases this morning around 11:30. I dozed in and out of sleep until then, getting up and brushing my teeth (twice) so as to avoid being too much of a goblin when I opened the door and had to point and nod and smile my way though the interaction.

Now I'm down to nearly nothing in the apartment, and the rest of it will be shoved into my backpack or purse or thrown out in the morning, except for the futon and company which will remain where it is on the floor in a vaguely neatened pile.

I remember before I came to Japan for the first time, back in April, the days leading up to going were full of melancholy for me. It wasn't that I particularly dreaded leaving my job behind. The job I had been doing was nice in that I was actually on a day-to-day payroll, but it wasn't classroom teaching. I feel so exhausted when I think about the fact that I added basically $25k in debt to my already-extant $15k in student loan debt for a job that apparently no one will hire me to do. I have set up another interim teaching position back home starting in early January, which is encouragement in the abstract, but it is not really reaching me emotionally.

Instead, I feel that thing I did back in April. It feels a lot like what I imagine waiting to be euthanized would feel like. I feel scared and sad but in a dull, strange, surreal way. I don't know why both these movies have made me feel something akin to fear for my own mortality.

I guess it might have something to do with that plodding sense of the passage of time, not having really accomplished anything. I feel like I am doing a somewhat professionally glorified equivalent of bouncing between fast food restaurants. It isn't that there is anything wrong with service jobs, but there is something wrong with the way those employees are valued and compensated so poorly. My most recent employers have been reasonably fair with me and nice, but it still just feels like I am an expendable red-shirt.

I talked to my mom a bit in the early afternoon, and she is really discouraged as is kind of usual. She has a physical disability, and between that and aging she is just having a lot of time really participating in any aspect of life. I wish I knew what to do to help her, but in another way, it is frustrating to deal with the way she conflates her mental health issues with her physical ones to the point that they become a monolith that no one can move. If it isn't one thing, it is the other, and if you try to get her to see them separably you very rarely get any cooperation. Instead, she thinks she is being judged harshly. She constantly talks about having to "defend herself," when I wish that she would just stop trying to defend what amounts to self-harm through refusal to do anything to help herself.

My best friend does that sometimes, too. The thing about refusing to take actions that she could take to help herself despite knowing that she probably should. She is having surgery soon, and while it sounds like her doctor is pretty sure it will go smoothly, the doctor also told her that certain really crazy complications could happen. This has her fearing her mortality and her future, too, but it seems like perhaps the worse part is how insensitive and callous her workplace has been about it. It makes me so angry on her behalf. At the very least she seemed to have gotten some confirmation from someone other than me that her employers are being cruel and unreasonable by basically dismissing the notion that she even needs a surgery (they don't even know what it is for) or any time to recover from said surgery.

She doesn't even work for a particularly capitalist-y kind of employer, but this attitude is so insidious and evil. The notion that you can just guilt someone into being an even better robot for you and not giving one shit about their work-life balance or quality of life or even if they live a day beyond their usefulness to you. It really makes me want her to get another job, and I think that she is beginning to consider that, but every time it comes up she goes back on it and says she won't really change anything. It breaks my heart for her, and it also frustrates me just a little bit because I wish I had options beyond just clawing along and hoping someone will have mercy on me. I don't want to compare the two situations too closely, because I don't think they match up between our lines of work, but I just want her to make the best of her situation while I try to make the best of mine.

I think she and I both have this tendency to feel obligated to our employers in a way that has to do with some kind of principle that we feel toward the value and importance of whatever we are doing. We feel like we can't quit until we're made to. I feel like this less and less, though, in the current cultural climate about work. I hope she can do the same to the extent that it will make her happier. And I hope we both don't have to start thinking about the "last time" we will do everything for a long time yet. It scares me to think about 30 as basically a death sentence rather than just a milestone.