Wei-Wei
Here's what I have: one sketchbook, two bodyguards, and forty-seven packets of spicy seaweed that grandapacked herself, individually, into a separate bag from my actual luggage, and handed it to me at the door with the expression of a woman sending someone into a war zone. I explained that Thailand has food (or tried to anyway), then she looked at me with that look she gives people who say things she finds deeply naive and told me to take the seaweed.
The result: I took the seaweed. Wei-Wei: 0 vs. Grandma: 1.
The two bodyguards are sitting across from each other on comfy couches in the airport lounge. I am between them, on my own couch/seat. I decided to name them Big Rock and Slightly Smaller Rock - they don't know that I named them thus, but I think my names for them are immensely more accurate depictions of their bearings. Big Rock has his hands folded in his lap and is reading something on his phone with the focused patience of a man who has been doing this for a long time. Slightly Smaller Rock is drinking his coffee and watching the gate. And we are all pretending not to watch anybody.
There is a child a couple of seats down from me who has been systematically destroying a croissant for the past 10 minutes. She looks to be four, maybe five years old - I'm not really good at estimating these things. She's holding the croissant in both fists, wearing an expression of someone conducting serious research. Buttery flakes are flying everywhere. She is quite obviously completely unbothered by this. Her mother is on her phone and, shockingly, unbothered. This whole spectacle left me with one conclusion: the croissant is losing.
I decided to open my sketchbook.
I draw quite fast when I'm not thinking about it. First, her cheeks, round and serious, then the two fists that ruined the croissant, and lastly, her absolute authority: someone who does not yet know that you are supposed to be tidy in public. I add the sunflower at the bottom corner like I always do, small and a little lopsided.
The little girl looks up and makes direct eye contact with me, and I show her the drawing.
She looks at it for a long moment, imitating the critical seriousness of an art professor, then goes back to the croissant (or what is left of it). I decided to take her silence as approval.
My phone buzzes. It's my brother, Jingwei. The message reads: Landed yet?
I reply: We haven't even boarded yet, and you know it.
His reply: I know. I'm just checking.
This is his way of saying something he won't dare utter aloud, which is that he is probably sitting somewhere - my guess is his office, most likely, in the middle of something that requires his full attention (like some multi-million-dollar merger) and is not currently receiving it - thinking about me getting on a plane and leaving everything behind. He can be so (silently) dramatic sometimes. He is obviously actually checking that I haven't changed my mind. I know this because I know him the way you know someone you have been looking at your whole life.
So, I write back: I'm still here. Still going.
A pause. Then: Good.
Just: Good. Four letters. From Jingwei, this is practically an essay. He's not very big on using his extensive vocabulary too often. Maybe he thinks it will become overused.
I put my phone away and look at the departure board. Bangkok. Three hours and forty minutes. There is something strange about seeing a place written down like that. It makes it more real, I suppose; a door you can actually walk through, not just a name you've been saying to yourself for months, constantly convincing yourself you're ready.
Here's the thing: I'm not going because I have to. That matters to me, even if I'm probably the only one it matters to. There are many ways to leave a place. There's the kind where something is chasing you – where the leaving is really just running away made respectable, given a suitcase and a boarding pass and a polite name.
This isn't that kind of leaving.
I chose Bangkok because I wanted to. There is a programme, and there is Pimchanok (my awesome cousin) who said, "Come," and there is the fact that in Bangkok, nobody has a story about me yet. Nobody will look at me and then look slightly away. Nobody will choose their words carefully in my presence or ask how I'm doing in that specific tone (the worried, but secretly judgemental one), or know, before I have said anything, before I have even walked into the room, exactly what happened to me and what scars it left behind.
In Beijing, I am me, but also always the thing that happened three years ago. The weight of it hangs in the air of every room I walk into. The people who love me carry it on my behalf, which is the kindest thing and also, sometimes, the heaviest. I am so tired of being looked at carefully.
Bangkok doesn't know me yet. That is the whole point. I am going to go there and study and paint and be nobody in particular, and whatever I find on the other side of that – whoever I turn out to be when I'm not being watched for signs of damage – I'll figure it out then.
I'm flying toward something, not away from it. The distinction matters. I may probably be the only one it matters to, but I am keeping it anyway.
The gate opens.
Across the lounge, Big Rock and Slightly Smaller Rock (maybe I should change it to Boulder?) stand up in the unhurried, simultaneous way they have, like a pair of very large mountains deciding to move. I close the sketchbook and pick up my bag – the one with the seaweed, which is, I want to note, almost heavier than my carry-on – and I join the line.
Bangkok. Okay.
Let's see what you are.