THERE WAS a tossup between going to Vietnam and going back to Taiwan. I had a lot of friends in Taiwan and a girlfriend there that I only seemed to see once every couple of months. The trip to Vietnam was a lot cheaper but I wanted to see how things were going with us as a couple. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and after the time I had spent in Bangkok I was only re-evaluating my life and setting a course. I was up by 7am writing, gym by 12 noon, and writing some more as it came to me during the day, but basical y trying to find things to do. I needed a deeper focus in my writing and I knew it.
How?
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My only thought was to slow things down and see what I needed to write and why.
Things had been strained lately and I could feel the tension she was getting from her family and also her friends. For some odd reason I had never real y met any of her friends. I was like the mystery man kept at bay and what was said behind closed doors, or behind my understanding of Mandarin, may have been different from what I was told. I had a habit of always believing her and usual y I didn’t doubt whatever she told me.
After a year into the relationship I think I caused a lot of family problems. Being of the western culture the rule is whatever my children made outside the house working was the parents’ money and I was responsible to raise them up so one day they could do the same for their new family. Not so in the Chinese custom. As long as you lived at home the money you made was not your own and usual y only a smal part of it you got to keep. I argued with her until I changed that and I think it caused a lot of problems with the father.
Soon after that time I was invited to the family house for dinner. It was a large dinner and very wel prepared. I had to bring the father two cartons of cigarettes which is the custom and hungbao the son’s child, which meant giving them money in a red envelope. I pretty much enjoyed myself. The son’s wife’s parents were there and he asked if we were going to get married. I felt a little uncomfortable and said I didn’t know. I had to smoke one of the cigarettes and chew one of the betel nuts as was the custom.
From the moment we met until today it has almost been two and a half years. I being 46 and her now being 30, I guess there is some pressure about things progressing down an aisle. But after this last trip I have no plans to proceed on.
Something was lost during those two months and I was away trying to figure out what my next goal was going to be and how to go about it. How this is misconstrued by a woman can be confusing although I know women talk and they like to push.
I gave up the trip to Vietnam and was planning a flight to Taiwan. A couple of days before I was due to make the reservation I checked with her and al was set to go. I flew out of Bangkok Friday afternoon and arrived in Taiwan at 6:30pm. Went to the bus station and got a bus to take me to where I was staying and got online. I reached her on Skype, and she said she was tired and going to bed and had a long day teaching the next day on Saturday, and would get off at 4pm then go home and shower and then come over late about 7pm or so.
At 7:30pm I get a Skype message that says she took a nap and that it was raining outside so possibly tomorrow would be a better day. Through al this I am thinking what is real y going on and if I want to know anymore. She never does this to me and wants to meet me the minute I get here. I am also thinking that I have made a huge mistake.
What was I missing? Why could I not tel ?
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Why did I change al my plans for this and she blows me off one weekend when I am planning on leaving on the next flight? I felt so upset by this that I do not want to see her anymore. The money I have spent for this meeting to happen is upsetting and shows my stupidity for not just ending this long ago when she would make il ogical requests.
As I sit here right now trying to find the correct words to pen on this page I find myself blank to what I real y feel. Too many people in this world see only what is in front of them and not the ghosts they leave behind. In this case we have both left ghosts behind that I didn’t ever want to see again. A person once said to me, “If you are dating someone you don’t feel you are going to marry then you have no business dating them, you are only messing around with someone’s future wife.” She was correct and I knew it but it was hard to drop things and move on when emotions are there.
The same philosophy goes with this relationship that makes it hard to deal with. I have tried several times but things always change or seem to be changing just enough to keep it going. In this last situation I just wanted to get back on the plane and go home. I have had things such as this happen before but not international y so to speak. You may drive over to a nearby town to go through this but not fly 3 ½ hours. If there was something important to be said it should have been said before I decided to fly over to Taiwan. Maybe it is just me but I think most guys wil agree with me that that type of behavior was not common and they would not put up with it. I have the tendency to put up with a lot and in the process, maybe cause myself internal damage that even time real y never takes away. You may dul it and put it in the far recesses of your mind but it is stil there with the smal est of memories; a place, a smel , even the way someone wears their hair. So these are the ghosts I speak of that linger behind.
I think at my age it is too late to change some things that are just part of us. Our inner core, what we are, you may say wil never change. We can harden but usual y the only people we hurt by that is ourselves and confuse the ones around us until they start figuring some things out about your character and what is of character and start asking awkward questions you do not real y want to answer and then if you get involved you start a new ghost.
The ghosts are something we al like to avoid but spring up at moments you can’t avoid and sometimes do not want to understand.
Like this one for instance. It wil take me years to put this past me so I am making a decision at this point that I don’t want any more ghosts to be in my past. I say this knowing this wil not be a true statement because I am human. But what happened two and a half years ago to cause this demise? The first time I met her was at the Canada Day beach party in Taiwan. I was basical y drunk and chasing my friends 12-year-old son around. He ran over by these two girls and I began to talk with them. We swapped some numbers then I was off on the race to catch the boy again.
A few days later I received a text message from her which I basical y ignored. She sent another a few days later and I answered back. She gave me her MSN account but I could never get through so I forgot about it. Apparently the “o’s” in her login were actual y zeros so I got it working.
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Time progressed from there to this point of a breakup not done by words but by typing on Skype. I turned in my cel phone when I moved from Taiwan to Thailand. I figured I didn’t need them both anymore. But I always carried my notebook and could get on the internet and many I needed to speak with were already on Skype.
I had a lot of things going on this weekend and didn’t want to leave Bangkok, but I reaffirmed with her before I made the reservations a couple of days ahead. I get into Taipei about 6:30pm and with al the buses and taxis I got at the office about 8pm. I got on Skype and she wasn’t going to come. The next day she worked until 4pm then went home and took a nap and got on Skype at 7:30pm saying it was raining so she was going to stay at home. This is Taiwan it always rains and she rides in a taxi!
After those two nights I wrote her off. I have been here for four days and have not heard another word. I know I need to just let it go and have another ghost in my past but I do believe I have done more for this girl then many other men have and wil mostly do that in the future. I am not a great man, just your average guy that tries to do the correct things to have the best output. I get so tired of men saying they wil never figure women out or some redneck who thinks his way is the only way and only he is right. I’m trying to get closer to the answer but I keep getting thrown curvebal s that are not meant to be caught, sometimes they just make you limp a bit or be thankful you were wearing a helmet.
So in this particular case that has been racing through my mind for four days, I have decided I’m not getting up to the batter’s box and I won’t even be at the game. I actual y don’t want to know the reason for this rudeness as I deserve to be treated better than that. Not a lot of people would fly to another country just to spend time with somebody and talk, and they duck out on you? I felt, deep in my heart, that she was incapable of this. Maybe there were extraneous circumstances or possibly I cannot read people as wel as I thought? Is there such a culture difference that this type of behavior is permitted in certain grey areas? Best to just let it go.
The problem is, it hurts. The 2 1/2 years of pictures, videos, places we have travel ed, bought together, the list goes on and on and you want to keep them in a box somewhere.
Just another ghost in the closet.
Time wil decide when it’s time to burn the box and I’l be in the future instead of in the past.
With some coaxing from my friend Chen in the office this morning, it was agreed that I spend the day taking the train to Pingxi up north. It’s an old railway line that runs up north to a town cal ed Hontong (look up in the dictionary) At that point we had lunch and I ran into a group of guys from Hong Kong coming for holidays that spoke perfect English and Mandarin. We had lunch and walked around a bit. The covered crossing bridge that goes to the other side of the tracks were being fil ed with 8’ x 10” photos of local cats. House cats may I add that were not amazing so much in beauty but in the positions they were in when the pictures were taken. I caught some very amusing antics of cats doing different poses and acrobats. The weather was a bit drizzly, it would be nice to have good weather to go further on to the more majestic sites.
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From there we caught another train to go on to our next stop of Stiffen. A nice little town with the old Taiwanese architecture that took you back in time. Although it was raining it was nice to walk around that old town. It was a vil age that thrived mostly on tourism. There was an old working coal mine on the out skirts but very little industry.
The train would drop you off in town. If you wanted a very slow paced, easy life this would be a good choice. There were picturesque mountains and rivers and further down the line, huge waterfal s.
Because of the weather as it was, drizzling constantly, I decided to head back to Taipei and plan another day to complete the journey to the other sites. At 5:10pm the weather was planning on drizzling for a long time I believed and between the weather and the darkness closing in I had lost interest in pursuing any further.
Now I was on the train heading south which was ful of what seemed to be high school kids. Al with phones in their hands and earphones on their heads. It was remarkable that for such a smal distance that we had traveled, the landscape had turned from rol ing green fields to multiplexed housing and tons of concrete. I am a little disappointed in my lack of adventure on this voyage. To many things on my mind to concentrate where I needed it to be.
The teenagers on the train were obviously getting out of school with their school uniforms stil on. When the train stopped and some people started getting off I asked one of the girls if I needed to get off here to catch a train to Taipei.
“I am going to Taipei so just fol ow me,” she smiled. I found an open seat and went back to my book, “The bridge over the river Kwai.” Pretty good book so far, I am only halfway through but years ago I visited that bridge and rode its railway and saw the massive field of graves. The book so far has not mentioned al the death that occurred making this railway. I am only half way through the book so it may show it more later. It is surprising to know that at that time the Japanese had no idea how to build a bridge. It was the British who engineered the project and made it possible. But as we know today the Japanese are quick learners.
It was dark now and whenever there was a stop on the train I looked to see if this was the one but no one said anything so I figured it wasn’t yet. We stopped again and a boy turned to me and said to fol ow him. We got off the train and walked through a tunnel and up some stairs where we caught another train. I was confused who I was fol owing anymore. With everyone having black and white school uniforms and al having black hair I was not sure who I was fol owing. A few stops later someone tel s me were are in Taipei so I get off the train and start looking for the signs to the MRT (smal er train) to get off close to my final destination.