Chapter 4.2 (2/2)

In this deserted rehabilitation room, I was actually quite frightened, or you could say uneasy. Every step was so unpredictable, and in any moment I could tumble to the ground again. I was someone who was scared, really scared of pain. And furthermore, all of my fear and suffering was for the sake of this frustratingly slow, extremely difficult progress, was for such an unseemly and inelegant struggle to take just a single, petty, little step.

Only when I fell did the tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g in my eyes flow down my face. Lying on my back, eyes raised to the ceiling, I cried silently.

Struggling back up was more even more painful than falling down. The fall and the subsequent pain are instantaneous, but getting up was an endless torment, a bitter misery. By the time I finally managed it I was drenched in sweat, the saltiness of my perspiration flowing from eyebrows to eyelashes. From time to time droplets of sweat landed in my eyes, burning stronger than my own tears.

I messily wiped my face, thinking that just one battle to stand seemed to already exhaust my vitality. But at this moment I was gambling with rest of my life. Each fall

Each fall only increased my fear of the next, because truthfully in my heart I was a cowardly weakling. If I ever retreated, I knew with certainty that I would never regain the courage to stand back up again.

I inched my left foot forwards again, making an infinitesimally small step, all the while feeling the tremors running through my leg.

When my left foot finally stabilized on the ground, I remembered how to breathe and my heart trembled with emotion. I needed to keep going like this, walking forwards one step at a time, until the day I rediscovered what it was like to to run.

In those five meters, I fell eight times. In that quiet room, one figure tumbled to the ground again and again, and another figure silently crawled back up amidst sweat and tears. There was no audience to applaud at my perseverance, no bouquets of flowers, no spotlight—there was only my loneliness.

When I fell for the last time at the end of those five meters I felt liberated. Even my nerves seemed dulled to the pain. I knew I might have reopened the wound on my lower leg from the way I could feel a warm wetness there and from the faint taste of iron in the air when I inhaled, but I didn’t care at all because I felt like I had finally regained control of my life.

I huddled on the floorboards, curled my arms around my head and silently began to cry. The emotions I had been holding in broke free in that moment

in that moment and gushed out—the desperation and helplessness I’d felt previously when I worried that I’d never walk again, the fear and dread of facing an unfamiliar world after losing my memories, the disappointment and bitterness when I discovered that no one in the world needed my presence, the false bravado and carefree att.i.tude I masked my panic and weakness in, the discomfort of not knowing how to approach my present and future—all of these feelings poured out of me along with my tears.

I lay on the ground like that, simply crying with whatever strength I had left in me, loudly wailing at the top of my voice. Like I was fighting a battle with myself, I wrestled with all the grievances and fears I had no one to share with and finally defeated the coward in me.

1 In Chinese the phrase “撕心裂肺” translates literally to “heart-tearing, lung-splitting” and is used to indicate extreme pain; grief; etc. I guess an English equivalent might be something like “heart-breaking” or “heart-wrenching” but those are usually more commonly a.s.sociated with emotional pain, imo.

TL: ALSO we have a bit of a dilemma. I personally enjoy learning Chinese idioms which is why I leave them in somewhat of a literal translation. Niang Niang disagrees with me though and thinks literal translations ruin the flow…what do you guys think??

Niang Niang: Also what do you guys think of having the translation note at the end of the paragraph instead of at the very bottom of the chapter? I imagine the back-and-forth scrolling can get pretty c.u.mbersome.

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