300 Words a Day for 30 Days: Part 2

“Are you absolutely sure all this is necessary?” I ask my aunt, Isabel Hsu. I finger the stitches as the mixture of city and clinging-for-dear-life vestiges of farmland skitters by the taxi windows. We dodge cyclists like they were pitfalls in a video game, turtle shells in Mario Kart perhaps, points deducted and life decreased should our vehicles touch. It’s likely the driver does not understand English, but I am not terribly worried about him understanding. My worries are occupied with more important things, like whether I’ll ever get to teach at an international school again, what Mom and Dad would have said if they were still alive, how Uncle Timothy Hsu is going to choreograph the dismantling of my two years in China without breaking or losing any of my possessions - and whether, assuming I never kill myself competently, I can one day wear short sleeves without embarrassment.

Aunt Isabel snorts. “They pumped your stomach, Margaret dear. Now don’t ask silly questions and eat your breakfast.” We left for the airport at five in the morning, and she insisted that I take along this steamed pork bun that now sits in my lap like a quadraplegic bunny. Though I’m not hungry, I unwrap the plastic from it to show good faith.

I don’t mean sending me to a temporary psychiatric ward in the U.S - after a few days’ observation to make sure the worst of my temptation had passed, and for them to put me on enough sedatives and antidepressants to make me numbly melancholy rather than violently despairing. Insurers have to hedge their bets. I mean making my relatives come all this way to tidy up my affairs and babysit me. Just because I tried to die earlier this week doesn’t mean I’m a child.