A Shit Situation

[Trigger Warning: This post includes discussions of bowel movements and eating disorders.]

It’s April and I’m so sorry. I’d planned to write about getting my driver’s license (back in January) and trying to get back some semblance of fitness (back in February and ongoing), while simultaneously resolving – once and for all – my persistent intestinal issues. The last, however, has been winning.

Since I returned to Japan, I’ve had pooping problems. Likely due to a combination of stress and a diverse range of eating disorders, I simply stopped pooping. At first, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Then, the bloating started, triggered by eating or drinking. I remember cycling home near tears after a mouthful of an electrolyte drink made my guts expand to late term pregnancy levels, my skin and kit stretched to their respective limits. My intestines began to cramp as I navigated hills home and soon after that, I began to avoid cycling outside.

Not pregnant, just bloated.

Approximately ten years later, the battle continues. Tired of the Chinese medicine that usually worked but turned my farts into weapons of mass destruction, I pressed for something more pharmaceutical. Goofice, a new drug for people who cannot poop, seemed promising given the reviews that people temporarily touched death due to its laxative effects. I happily took the small pills home and popped two and waited. And waited. And waited. Though my doctor would later increase the dose to three pills, absolutely nothing happened.

Next was the notorious Linzess, known for triggering bouts of diarrhea lasting hours. Impressively, it worked somewhat consistently but required that I not leave my house for 6 to 7 hour blocks. I once took it at 6am in the hope that my bowels will be clear by my 2pm Muay Thai class. I was not so lucky and ended up running laps to the bathroom until the late afternoon. Though not a listed side effect, it also caused intense fatigue. I stopped taking it after realizing that a drug could, in fact, lower my already-quite-low quality of life. 

Between the drugs, I’ve tried a number of restrictive diets that taught me to avoid cruciferous vegetables and beans and probably bread, but not much else. Other vegetables appear to have no adverse effects until they do. I can’t tell if fruits help or hurt me. Fiber cereals and supplements tend to sit like a brick in my gut. Every other week, I debate the merits of trying the all meat, carnivore diet until some article or Reddit post makes me consider going vegan. In the meantime, I am living off Danone’s Bio Yogurt (Activia for those in the U.S.), while occasionally questioning whether dairy is an issue.

The worst part is that I look healthy, even like I could afford to lose a few kilos (potato chips do not appear to contribute to malicious bloat). One doctor bluntly told me to lose weight. Others tend to look at me, learn that I’m on an antidepressant, and conclude my issues are caused by the Japanese justification for everything: stress.

Because Japan, apparently, considers itself a very stressed country. There is the image of the overworked, Japanese salaryman and death from overwork has its own word. As an island country with an extremely homogenous culture where bullying is commonplace, even in the workplace, there seems to be an unstated understanding that conforming to social expectations combined with job responsibilities can lead to some pent-up stress. And that stress could reasonably be the reason behind sexually assaulting strangers, secretly recording customers in toilets, embezzlement, arson, and pedophilia. Why not, then, constant constipation?

Unfortunately, I tend to play right into the medical gaslighting by looking more stressed when the doctor mentions stress so now he can tell me that see, I am, in fact, stressed. In response, I quickly turn into Walter from The Big Lebowski when he overreacts to a bowling game, frantically telling doctors that I’m not stressed; actually, I’m less stressed than most people, in the most stressed way possible. I have not yet asked these doctors whether groping someone or stealing money would make me regular.

Considering the consequent depression and desperation, it’s probably a good thing I haven’t asked. When the bloating starts, any kind of exercise becomes impossible. Most of the time, I can jog slowly and lift weights in the morning if I don’t eat solid food, but anything in the afternoon is often not an option. With the Muay Thai gym opening from 2pm, I’ve battled with the guilt and frustration at not being able to go to class. Thus far, I haven’t molested anyone on public transportation due to stress, but it hasn’t been a happy time.

While my intestinal issues have bummed me out a lot this year, unlike my bodily waste, I finally managed to crawl most of the way out of the black hole of intestinal issues this past weekend. I have scrounged up some hope that maybe, if I don’t let it get me down, it’ll finally give up and go away. Or, that my new doctor will find something while excavating both ends of me later this month and I’ll have a tangible, treatable diagnosis. And if, by some chance, this is with me forever, I can still write and craft, laxatives exist, and this isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Although, I will reconsider that last statement if I have to permanently give up croissants.

The Road to Drift King

In mid-November, I signed up for driving school. How I managed to make it to 40 without ever operating a vehicle was due to a combination of good public transportation, the kindness of friends, bicycles, and Ubers. Depending on public transportation while in Tokyo is easy – we have layers of subway lines and trains that make the need for a car almost obsolete – and getting around by bike in Boston wasn’t difficult either. I assumed, too, that future outdoor excursions would primarily happen on two (unmotorized) wheels. Given that I would likely never need to own a car here, and the cost of driving school in Japan, I kept putting it off. Besides, Uber exists for a reason, right?

What I did not exactly think through is that while Ubers and taxis and friends can drop me off at a trailhead, getting transportation back to civilization from a point where cell phone reception is sketchy, at best, is more complicated. The idea of having a metal box with wheels to plunge into when a bear or cougar inevitably chases me down a mountain provided some further reassurance from involuntary death. Around the time of this realization, friends also started – quite inconveniently – to have children that they preferred or were required to pilot around to avoid being featured on Dateline. All of which indicated that I needed to do what I should have done 20 years ago: learn how to become the Drift King of Tokyo.

So far, learning how to drive has involved more homicide than I’d expected. My first hour at driving school consisted of an aptitude test that asked whether I’d considered killing myself and how much I resented others. I assume this is a low-tech way for the government to gather psychological information on its citizens, which I promptly handed over because I’d really like to drive a car.  A lecture on driving safety was followed up by a video showing a man killing a child in a crosswalk and his subsequent imprisonment. While a voiceover warned about criminal penalties, the man, dressed in a prison-issue sweat suit, desperately pleaded with his weeping wife through a thick plastic wall. Another lecture involved how not to use your car horn if you don’t want to get murdered, or worse, judged, by strangers.

As for the actual driving itself, well, good luck to everyone else. Movies always show the protagonist, a.k.a. Vin Diesel, dramatically shifting into top gear. I shifted into 2nd with the same flair only to have my instructor grab the steering wheel and gently turn the car to avoid driving into the other lane. Within the first week of driving school, I was instructed to stop and start on a steep slope. I immediately rolled back at least a meter while trying to start the car, three times. A couple days later, I was told to negotiate narrow S-turns. It felt like playing Operation, with only my left foot pumping the clutch for navigation.

The process to “join the motoring community” as the driving school textbook calls it, is more mentally draining than I’d expected. The steering wheel and I continue to have our differences. At this age, or because I haven’t been in a formal learning environment for over a decade, attempting to absorb information and accurately and consistently repeat actions for more than an hour turns my brain into oatmeal. My choice of the semi-English course – where the lectures are in English but the driving lessons are in Japanese – means that I am also trying to translate my thoughts into Japanese as I steer, slow, and stop. I can feel steam coming out of my ears as my 40-year-old meat computer gradually overheats and ceases to function.

Driving school also apparently includes lesson on how to manage someone else’s emotions while under stress. So far, two instructors have lost their tenuous grasp on emotional stability with me at the wheel. This either confirms that I am doing my part to terrorize them, or that they have misplaced passenger princess expectations. One male instructor got so upset he made me sit in the passenger seat while he turned at speed before slamming on the brakes, to punish me for my poor driving. It seemed dramatic, even for me. I considered trying to translate “bro, chill” into Japanese, couldn’t come up with anything, and instead hoped he wouldn’t run me over on the way out.

Incredulously, my learner’s permit test is scheduled for the end of this week, after which I’ll be let loose with an instructor on open roads. I have little to no hope of actually passing, but no one ever said the road to becoming Drift King would be easy. Plus, there can’t be much of a villain/vigilante story without failures that will shake the core of my car-driving being, right?

And until then, well, just call me the Engine Stall Queen.

A December Jalapeno

Late in July, I sprouted jalapeno seeds. Despite my tardiness in planting them and consequent general neglect, they managed to put on, first, flowers, then a handful of peppers. Though Tokyo winters are mild, I’d expected them to wither away by November, and was surprised by their apparent resolve to survive. A few weeks ago, accepting that they were determined to live – if only out of spite – I dragged them inside into slightly warmer temperatures.

I’ve felt like those jalapeno plants a lot this past decade, striving to thrive but not given the best circumstances to do so. I expected 2022 to be similar to the ten preceding years; the kind where I exit the year resigned that I’d remained stuck in the same place I found myself in 2021, with little hope that the coming year would be much better. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I was prepared to go through the motions again this year, for whatever it is I’m supposed to be living for.

For a year that started with lingering pandemic stagnation and the kind of apathy where I struggled to even mindlessly binge Netflix, 2022 ended on a surprising note. There was no big event, no “aha” moment where things clicked into place as movies and other forms of fiction may have you believe. Instead, it was a cohesion of little hopes and efforts, big support from a best friend of decades, and a lot of luck, snowballing into something to be optimistic about. For the first time in a long time, I’m ending the year feeling lucky, prepared to make 2023 a brighter one.

That’s not to say that the future will consist of easy coasting, but I feel secure – for maybe the first time in my life – that there will be a wheel to draft, a lead out when needed, and a spot when I’m struggling, that does not solely consist of an overburdened best friend. I also know that should I find myself out of luck, with a little help from friends, that I can find my way back to where I need to be. Which is essentially to say that at 39, my life is starting to feel like my own and that I’m not so horrified at where its headed.

As friends and motivational Instagram posts have reminded me, it’s always harder to hope. Giving up absolves one of any effort; it’s easy to surrender to a half-lived life. I concede that I’ve done the latter too much this decade, to the obvious dismay of friends who have attempted to smack sense into me while never failing to push and pull me up when I was down. To those of you who have been there, please accept my profuse apologies, eternal gratitude, and the promise that I will hope harder.

Thank you. I love you. And let’s go 2023!

Hot Water Dreams

I recently spent part of an overseas vacation engaging in a passive aggressive electronic exchange with Airbnb. What I originally imagined would be a relaxing, enjoyable pilgrimage back to the U.S. had turned into a first-world nightmare. The space in question was great; it was cozy, relatively private, and located in a safe, wealthy-looking neighborhood. The issue was the hot water in the shower lasted a mere sixty seconds per day. 

I raised the issue with the host, naively believing that this must be some kind of mistake. The second time I asked her about it, she told me that Southern California was under a drought advisory and that “we take short showers.”

 By this time, I had endured three days of showers that started semi-hot, then quickly cooled to the colder side of lukewarm by the time I reached for the bar of soap. In the grand scheme of things, it was a minor inconvenience, just uncomfortable enough to make me miserable. Of all the uncomfortable scenarios I had imagined could manifest during this trip, lack of hot water was not one of them. Plus, hadn’t my host implied that hot water was deliberately being throttled as a forcing mechanism to save on her water bill, at my expense? Had I actually paid her for that privilege?

As I fantasized about letting the “hot” water run for hours and googled the implied warranty of habitability to make sure that I wasn’t going off the reservation, I leaned back in bed with my half-washed hair and did the only thing I could do: I binge watched Hoarders to feel less alone in my lack of baseline utilities.

Hoarders, as always, delivered. My irritation gave way to a grudging admission that at least I had a functioning toilet. But while I normally used the show to redefine the words “cluttered” and “messy,” a woman clinging to impossible dreams caught my attention. Adamant about completing her late husband’s spacious dream home, she had instead filled it up as if to protect herself from the reality of the task and the inevitability of failure. Life and loved ones had made clear that this wasn’t a path that would lead to any kind of happiness, but she refused to accept that fact.

“That dream is the only thing I have,” she said at one point.

“But that’s what life is,” Dr. Tompkins said, “accepting the loss of things that could be.”

When I planned this trip, a stateside visit for the first time in three years, I’d imagined that coming back would feel like home. It’s the only place I could feel normal, I’d claimed, and I had no doubt that the transition from Tokyo to L.A., San Diego, and San Francisco, would be seamless. I’d feel comfortable because, if not for immigration laws, the U.S. was where I was supposed to be. It was where I was supposed to thrive.

Or, so I told myself as I looked fruitlessly for jobs, life, friends, and partners in Japan. I imagined that life stateside would be normal, that my ability to communicate in the same language and understand cultural norms would gift me with some measure of, if not success, contentment. I conjured up an imaginary life where, on balance, things were generally pretty good, a far contrast from the mild discomfort I experienced every day in Tokyo.

Two weeks and several cold showers later, I’ve discovered how uncomfortable things can be here. After three years away, I’d assumed that I’d arrive stateside with blinders and rose-colored glasses strong enough to mask all of the imperfections I’d encounter. Instead – blame it on the cold showers or the piles of human feces on San Francisco sidewalks – I found myself a little less enthused, a little more conscious of the fantastic nature of my imagined stateside life. While I’m currently better equipped to handle emotional discomfort and hurt, would I have arrived at this place in my life without being anchored in Tokyo? Even if everything had gone according to the plan I’d set out for myself, would I have ended up happy? Or would the ease of living where I’m most comfortable only have served to perpetuate bad emotional habits? 

Previously, I would have said that it would all have been positive, because everything in my life in Tokyo had been the opposite. I felt stuck, and therefore, increasingly left behind by my peers who weren’t encumbered by a foreign nationality. Declaring that it was due to being legally tethered to Japan was a coping mechanism; a way to tell myself that there was hope for me somewhere. That I wouldn’t have been a failure everywhere.

But after a pandemic and some extensive therapy, even that definition of myself seems to have worn itself out. The reality is that I’m only a failure according to the dreams I’d set out for myself years ago, when I was decidedly less informed about my own happiness. It’s true, and maybe always will be, that life would be easier for me stateside. But for the first time since I’ve moved back to Japan, I accepted that happiness isn’t confined to specific locations and that clinging to a stateside dream hasn’t made me any happier. That maybe I don’t need to be somewhere to be happy.

That said, once I landed in Tokyo, I questioned whether these thoughts had been fueled by the generously potent legal cannabis in California. There’s comfort and familiarity with staying in the past, to keep identifying with dreams on life support. But like that lady on hoarders who built walls of stuff around her to keep an expired dream alive, the past can ruin any chance of happiness in the present.

I’m ready to let go. But not, you know, of hot water in paid accommodations.

A Half-Price Brazilian Kind of Year

It’s been a year akin to a half-price wax. After an invisible year holding my breath – literally and figuratively – for a pandemic to pass, I went into 2021 with hope and expectations, feeling justified in my optimism given the creation of vaccines. 2021, I believed, would be a reward of sorts, a return on the investment in misery I’d made the year before. A time to collect on the karma points for masking up and resisting travel.  

Predictably, I’ve barely made it out. That’s not to say there weren’t signs, but waves of Covid, however numerous, did appear to temporarily abate. I clung to whatever positivity I could muster, convincing myself that the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t visible because it was around a corner, not because it didn’t exist. I told myself it was all a matter of perspective.

My newfound positivity was admittedly fueled by desperation and social isolation. I chose to ignore that crucial fact and forged forwards; after all, don’t they say that a positive attitude changes everything? When an email arrived in my inbox for a discount Brazilian wax from the waxing salon I frequent, I saw it as an opportunity. A little high five, wink, wink, from a business to its regular patrons, a co-conspirator who understood the importance of self-care during terrible times.

I should have known: there is no such thing as altruism in a shitty economy. Like the emergence of niche Greek letters into everyday conversation to describe pandemic variants, there were hints that this waxing session wasn’t going to go well. Maybe it’ll get better, I told myself, as if that had worked in 2020, maybe she’ll figure it out. Neither miracle occurred. Optimism slowly sank into disappointment, then dread, then despair as I realized I’d paid someone to give me ingrown hairs in delicate areas. Later, the image of my 5,000 yen bill being fed through a shredder repeated like a gif in my head as I tweezed out stray pubic hairs that would have been visible from space.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this experience would repeat itself for the rest of the year. Hope, defeat, dismay. By September, I was less than enthused to be waking up every day to the same cloistered routine and I’d nearly given up hope of a year that could be salvaged. Yet, ever hopeful when faced with the opposite, even on the afternoon of the 31st, I imagined that something could turn this year around.  

The odds of such a reversal are slim. Like the half-trained aesthetician who was shoved into a small room with my bikini line and a time limit, 2021 wasn’t set up to succeed. This year has been a cluster of time lost, deteriorating mental health, dudes who ghost, and persistent burn out. On the other hand, that aesthetician could have sent me to the emergency room and my labia did live to see another (full price, this time) Brazilian wax. That might not be much, but under the circumstances, I’ll take it.

2021, it hasn’t been fun, but thanks for the memories.