2. "Unconscious" the Protector

In life, there is a time when you look back and be astonished how you as a human are capable of figuring out how to survive without knowing that’s what you do. One way is to avoid facing detrimental factors in your life and put them away so that you can survive. We do this all at a very unconscious level. I view this as a testimony to intuition and the reason why the conclusions intuition draws usually are correct.

I left my birthplace to live in the US when I was 17. Back then not many young girls left home before getting married let alone to another country right after high school. I remember the excitement and focus I had on this adventure.

Throughout the years of my living in the US, people often commented how brave I must have been to leave my family and friends, and come live in a foreign country by myself at such a young age. Each time I heard the comment I thought to myself, “I don’t feel like I’m brave… I’m just having a greatest time of my life feeling reborn and free to be myself. Being brave doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my life here.“

People also used to ask why I came to US. For a long time I made myself and others believe that I came here to be exposed to a new culture and study abroad. After all, that’s what most foreign students did. It seemed like a very sound reason. I felt pretty good about that. But it wasn’t long before a vague irritation that whispered something unsettling began poking it's head at me. It seemed there was something unknown about my feeling toward my own background, and there might be a lie in the story I was telling. But it didn’t prompt me to explore to find out if there is anything to that irritation. I was choosing not to explore so I don’t have to find the answer. I chose to ignore the whisper and look away.

I loved where I lived as a foreign student, Berkeley, California, a well-known liberal college town where free thinkers of the time actively spoke up in public and did what they preached. I consider this town the adopted hometown of my heart to this day. Yes it was very obvious I loved it there, but there was something wrong. I was asked to visit my family back home from time to time, and it was difficult for me to be happy about it. I actually dreaded it each time. Why would I dread going home for just a few weeks when I knew I would head back to US after that? I still remember one year, tearing up on the airplane leaving to Haneda International Airport near Tokyo as it lifted off and I saw that my familiar San Francisco was getting further away down below. Why?

At times I tried to resign to the possibility that I was just one of those people Japanese society calls “a deserter”, who rather love a foreign culture than her own. At the same time I used to cringe and feel a bit of anger when I heard a Japanese phrase like "A-me-ri-ca Ka-bu-re". It’s a phrase used to describe someone who is blindly passionate about America, and it’s often tinted by disgust felt by people who called someone that. The disgust may come from the fact that America once dropped an atomic bomb on Japan which lead to horrific suffering of innocent people and Japan’s surrender, or the perception of how US oppresses less powerful nations, or it may just come from an objection to looking away from your roots. I’m not sure. I was also saddened as I heard other words of rejection by Japanese people directed toward someone like myself who left the country.

I was never directly told anything of that nature personally, but I felt very selfish and rejected for what I was doing all the same. I didn’t mean to disrespect my country and culture of origin let alone my family. Yet strangely there was this strong negative feeling deep inside me when it comes to how and where I grew up. And it entangled itself with those words of rejection by total strangers that had nothing to do with me and seemed to create a bigger hurt in me.

Years passed by, and a lot happened. After school I got married to a man from New Jersey and moved to a large city in southeastern part of US where his parents were running a business. I worked as graphic designer in a design studio and eventually had children. I had no doubt that I was living a very normal life then. But years later I realized that my life married to this man was another good evidence that I didn’t know myself very well back then.

Eventually we moved from southeast US to northwest. The marriage failed few years after the move across the country. I went through a very difficult divorce on my own and began a new life living as a single mother of two.

It was then that I slowly began to wonder more consciously about the real reason behind my leaving Japan at such an early stage of my life, because it was rather clear to me that I didn't want to go back to my hometown even as a single mother who had no family around.

My urge to know grew stronger by months, and eventually by days. Why do I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about going back? Why didn’t I try harder to teach my children Japanese? Why don’t I miss my parents, relatives, or friends? It seemed only person I missed was my younger sister. Am I such a cold person that I don’t care? Am I a horrible person?

But all that wondering ended recently. I had a revelation that clarified what actually happened, that shed lights on the reasons why I left Japan when I did.

It was not bravery, or disrespect to my culture and family, that propelled me to fly clear across the Pacific Ocean. It was a desperate attempt to preserve myself, and my chance for true happiness in life I only have once to live. It was my unconscious trying to save me from further harm.