The Difference Between Growing Up and Getting Older

My entire life has been based on lies. Lies about what life should be like, who should be in it, and where they belong. Lies about myself and the people who pretend to love me. My childhood is a dark room that I locked away a long time ago and buried the key to. I don't want to remember anything about it, and over time, I forced myself to forget.

My name means "one second". My parents named me that because my dad was drunk when my mom went into labor and mispronounced my intended name, "Mei Jiao", to the doctors, but if you ask my mom, it's because one second can make a difference. In my experience, it takes a lot more than one second to make any kind of difference.

I am a Chinese girl with parents who still hold many traditional views. Until they got rid of me, I also shared these views. Every part of my life was decided for me: where I went, what I studied, the person I was to marry, and even who I was friends with. I was sent to a school a few miles away from my parents' house and I talked to people whose parents were in the same income bracket. These people were allowed to be my friends. After I graduated senior school, I was expected to go to a university to study computer science. At 15, my parents arranged a marriage between me and a boy who had just gotten into a prestigious university. He was better than some of my friends' boyfriends, but he wasn't excellent in any category. My life was extremely average for a traditional-style middle-class Chinese girl, except for my relationship with my parents.

Despite that my parents provided for me and worked hard to solidify my life alongside a man with potential, they did not love me. Chinese law allowed for only one child, and before my parents had me, my mother was pregnant with a boy. She miscarried and they tried to have another child. I was the second one, and my parents reminded me of it all the time. Life would have been easier for them had I been born a boy like my older brother. They could be provided for, and wouldn't have to be concerned about me in so many ways.

If I had been a boy, I would have been freer, too. I could choose who my friends were, who I was to love, and what I wanted to study. I could choose what to do, where to go, and dictate the direction of my life. Boys always had it easier.

***

I was a quiet child. I was shy and feminine. When I went to school, the other children ignored me mostly, except for a boy named Jie and a girl named Chen.

The three of us would study together and play together. Our parents would nod to each other politely and talk about the weather, politics, and other neutral topics. Our mothers sometimes went to the opera together. We rarely saw each other outside of school due to the Chinese school system. We rarely had free time, so we spent almost all of our time studying deep into the night. We woke up early every morning to go back to school and do it all over again.

Chen and Jie spent more time together than they spent with me. I began to notice some little differences in their behavior. Jie and Chen would often brush hands walking or poke each other's arms until bruises lined their gangly limbs. I was still short and thin and awkward-looking with nobby elbows and knees that looked like a bird's. I had long, glossy black hair like a smooth river of oil. Chen had naturally wavy brown hair like a westerner's. Of course, it was beautiful. And her eyes were wide and huge, and always sparkling. My eyes were thin and downturned. She was cheerful, kind, and full of energy and I was withdrawn and sullen. Everyone liked Chen, and they liked me by association, though association was the extent of my relationship with others.

Then Chen's mother sent her to a math school to improve her scores before middle school. My parents wanted to do that, too, but they thought it was pointless. My parents admitted to my grandparents that night that they believed me stupid. I stood in the doorway as they told them that, holding my teddy bear and listening to their conversation, wondering if I really was stupid.

Jie and I were classmates into high school, even after Chen was transferred to a different room. Things continued as normal with him, though he became uncomfortably sensitive to my moods, lifestyle, and the things that happened in my life. I remember one day after my parents hit me with a belt, he asked me when I was planning to tell him. I just scribbled some notes down that didn't make sense and ignored him.

In our second year, he brought me outside with him in the back of the school where teachers wouldn't find us and he cried, hugging me close to him. I didn't raise my arms to hug him back, but he held me even tighter.

"I feel so terrible, Yi Miao. You're so scared and traumatized," he sobbed, his words almost incoherent. I felt his hot tears soaking my uniform. "You can't even open up to me..." I didn't have anything to say to him. He was so weak, so fragile. I didn't want to break him. If I opened up to him, the weight of my life would destroy him. His weakness made me hate him.

Upon graduation, I was to marry the nameless man that my parents had picked out for me. Jie sat with me the night before the ceremony. We had become lovers despite the feelings that stuck inside me like barbs, spoiling almost every moment we had together. It was forbidden, of course, not that I cared. My parents could not be any more disappointed in me than they already were.

"Don't you love anything?" he asked that night, his bare skin hot against mine. I was cold. I was always cold.

I thought about my answer. My parents hated me, were disappointed in my existence, and wanted me away as soon as they could have me gone. They arranged for me to marry a boring, nameless man much older than me. I had no real friends. I had never trusted anyone enough to tell them the truth of my life, not even Jie. I didn't really blame anyone for not liking me. I didn't even like myself.

"The only person I have is you," I told him truthfully, no emotion involved. "I guess that's something to appreciate."

The answer didn't satisfy him.

"So will you go through with this marriage?" he asked, watching my face. I stared ahead like I always did.

"I don't really have a choice."

"What about us?" he asked, touching my face. I hated to admit that it made me feel something. My heart tugged in my chest and I closed my eyes to hide the emotion that threatened to escape. "Do you want to continue this?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't talk past the lump in my throat.

"I love you, Yi Miao... You are the most important thing to me."

It added to the mass of emotion clogging my throat. I thought I might choke.

"I want to marry you, too..."

My heart began beating quickly. A rush of heat flooded my face. It was foreign to me.

"If you'll have me, I'll marry you and take you away from all of this..."

I felt myself shaking. Tears were dropping from my eyes like shards of glass from a broken window.

"We can go somewhere far away, where you can be free. We can both be free." He paused, kissing me. It was the first time I'd really felt it. "Would you like that?"

Unable to speak, I nodded.

***

In the years after our escape from China, Jie and I settled in America. We were free there, or as free as people like us could become. Our parents cut ties with us after our tradition-breaking marriage. Despite all of our attempts to have a baby, I only got pregnant once and miscarried within the first trimester. I was devastated.

The night I discovered the miscarriage, Jie cradled me against his chest in the bathroom, rocking me back and forth on the cold tile. It was oddly soothing. It brought me back to the childhood that I had never had, the loving arms that had never encircled me and the voice that had never sweetly sang me to sleep. Other than this sensitive, persistent, loving man, I had no one. But Jie was someone, so I was not truly alone.

But I was broken. Always sad, distant, and cold. I could not love like I wanted to, and like he had loved me. I was always sick and depressed. Jie only had me, and he was alone.

When I started to hear someone whispering to me and I was alone, I withdrew into myself again. I didn't speak to Jie for days. I didn't accept his food or water. I became sickly and pale. Curled up on the carpet, I listened to the voices telling me things I didn't want to know about my parents, my classmates, my husband, and other people. They told me things I didn't want to hear about myself. My infertility.

Bruises appeared on my body without explanation. Jie told me that I had been thrashing in my sleep, but I awoke, stiff and straight as a board and unable to move my aching muscles.

"I can't do that," I said to the voice that had told me to eat a fork. "It's metal."

"It wouldn't taste very good," a second voice agreed.

"What?" Jie asked, his eyes wide. "Who are you talking to, Yi Miao?"

"He's kind of stupid, isn't he?" the first voice said, in reference to my husband. "You should just punch him to teach him a lesson."

"That's my husband," I said angrily, hitting my own head to quiet the voice. "Shut up!"

When next I remember, my husband sat with me on the kitchen floor, sobbing again. He was so fragile. "We can make it through this, Yi Miao... We can support each other."

I ignored the voices laughing at his tears, and at mine that were beginning to fall.

***

I looked down at Jie, sleeping peacefully. His eyes were gently closed. His chest rising and falling. He was so kind, so sweet. As I stared down at him, I realized that he wasn't weak. He was actually stronger than me. He could show his emotion and get hurt every time, and still he would show how he felt. Still, he would love people. That was true strength.

I felt tears pushing up from my eyes. My heart tugged. I might never see him again. I realized then that I really loved him. Despite my distance, my reticence, and my fear... I loved him.

Every step I took away from him became harder and harder. I opened the door and stepped into the night. It was cold. The cement was even colder, and rough on my feet. I wore only my nightgown. I knew Jie would be worried if he woke up and I wasn't there, so I knew I had to hurry. I couldn't force myself to run or move any faster than a weak hobble.

Cars wove their lazy ways through the darkened streets. Faces peered curiously at me through fogged-up windshields and dim passenger's seats as they sped by. The sky was getting lighter by the time I reached the hospital. The stars were beginning to fade into the brightening night. The automatic doors slid open with a swoosh and I was greeted by warm air and stark white floors and ceilings.

"Is something wrong?" the woman at the counter asked, also in all white. I hated white.

"My mind not right," I told her in the best English I could muster. "I hear voices."

As the doctors took me into an examination room, I looked once more out the doors. The sunrise was beginning to break over the horizon, painting the sky pale yellow and purple. My husband, the kindest man in the world, waited outside, watching me with a stricken expression on his face. I smiled even as tears poured down my cheeks.

It's for the best, I said in that smile. You deserve something better than this.

And he disappeared as the white doors slid shut between us.