It’s bad form to cry on Chinese New Year, a supposed celebration of fresh beginnings and prosperity, an annual gathering of friends and family to look at how the past years have aged—hopefully like fine wine—and to gear up for another season. Though not explicitly written like how it is taboo to sweep floors on the first day of the celebration, it is indeed bad form to cry.
Every year, without fail, I would play witness to my growing excitement as lanterns are strung up and stacks of freshly-pressed notes come into circulation. My fervor stemmed not from the notion of getting out of school or receiving more angbaos than could fit in my purse; something about the traditions and actual carrying out of said traditions has always made Chinese New Year feel more like a clean slate than January first. To think you could clean house and push all the bad luck of last year out the door, leaving tea out only for good omens—it’s something anyone could use. When families would merrily gather around the kitchen in different units preparing myriad food and snacks for the occasion, seasoning the air with laughter, it’s like anything could be forgiven and forgotten and the page could be flipped over steamboat and yee sang. Every nook and cranny would be dusted and wiped, as if the act of cleaning harbors the ability to vanish mistakes of any circle. I’ve always reveled in that atmosphere at my grandmother’s house, where time ceases to flow as I iron out the wrinkles of my dress and overdose on chrysanthemum tea.
But the truth is this revelry has not been mine to indulge in for a while. I have long since obliviated the sensation of watching a lion dance, the mechanical blinking of eyes, the sparkle of its fur, the way you can always spot the out-of-place shoes of the operators. I have not held my breath as the lion dancers leap from one plinth to another for three years, or maybe I have held that breath for three years.
My flying back abroad for university this year coincided with the advent of Chinese New Year. When I was meant to retain the spirit as I had years previous, I did not. You see, I have a bad habit of believing that just because I have snuffed out an issue, it would be left in the past like a used sparkler, never to bother me again. Yet, despite all the January hours I had clocked in towards introspection and retrospection, monsters I thought I had slain came roaring back to life as soon as the plane hit the tarmac.
At all once, the cold slithered around me and sank in its claws. It was so much more than the weather; it was the emptiness and loneliness I had been trying to fend off before I had left for break. Being back brought the failures and losses of last winter to the forefront of my brain; a much more painful memory than how much one had lost gambling last spring. Gruesome was the feeling that I could not shake, and helplessly I descended into the belief that all my efforts were for naught—that despite temple prayers and zodiac consultations, I would continue to defy all odds in the most despondent way possible.
Between the injury and anxiety, I have been spending a lot of time in bed. Despite my inclination to believe I have spent that time doing some good ol’ thinking for the soul, I’m afraid I have spent more of it missing. Missing things, moments, and people from my past. What those things, moments, and people entail, I shall not burden you with the knowledge. In many cases, as I have grown to learn, ignorance is bliss.
My missing turns into longing turns into wanting turns into needing, a sound so sweet no mouth can bear, like the tang of a tangerine slice plucked from the centre of your grandmother’s dining table, peeled and ready to be consumed. My pain is peeled and ready to be consumed; sweet in the mouth of others, sour in mine. I stuff the whole thing down at once without breaking it into slices in a final cry for help. They mistake this for enjoyment.
I’ve never been much for religion but I think I’m beginning to understand. When there is no one around you to listen anymore, you turn to the sky. You let yourself believe that someone up there is listening, that if you get through to them, they could help turn the tides, because if not and no one is listening at all, what a lonely feeling that must be.
Here it is, the pill I swaddle in the folds of my tongue and refuse to swallow: As terrible as my situation may appear, as much as I think my injury and anxiety are not bettering despite my efforts at healing, it is all in my head. No one is coming to save me. There is no calendar day that will magically revive my prior glory and happiness. Everybody else’s world continues to spin even if I do not get myself out of bed in the morning, even if I continue to cry myself to sleep at night. I have to do the saving. I have to clean house and surrender that it will work. I have to heal in blind faith that something will come out of it.
I’m out with lanterns looking for myself. I have been for a long time, only the lantern is unlit. I’m setting fireworks to scare off my fears. Only scaring something away and not defeating it almost guarantees an eventual return. I’m red all over but not in the way the celebration has intended—instead with bite marks and fingernail imprints.
I have been running away from my past while trying to hold onto them, thinking my past could serve as a constant as I venture into the future, this intimidating maze that could go one of many ways. Worse yet, I have been running in the dark. I used to think that I was afraid of the dark and that is why I hold onto the past and prohibit myself from any form of progressive healing. Maybe I just needed someone to hold my hand. But I have come to realize that I’ve never been afraid to go out into the pitch black, daunting maze—I am afraid to light the lantern and allow myself the belief that there might be good things, moments, and people waiting ahead for me. But without a light, how could I tell if the passage is open or a dead end?
So I let the light shine on the path ahead of me, even if the flame isn’t everlasting. All I need is to see the possibility of something greater, something better. With that, I will put one foot in front of the other. I have no doubt that the winds will work against me at times and my cloak will serve as hindrance more than protection; that the flame will waver and threaten to go completely out at the darkest point of the maze; that monsters from my past will howl at my abandonment and inject me with liquid guilt; that I will stumble over uneven ground, under which my past selves lay. What will—and has to—get me through is I keep finding ways to light the lantern again.
Because if there is one thing I know about flames, it is that it always comes flickering back.
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