I had my first vision of myself in Japan while lying on an operating table, having a surgery that was going horribly wrong.
It was June in Northern California. I was twenty-three years old and a year away from graduating as an English major from UC Berkeley. Every move I’d ever made had been calculated. I spent an extra year in community college doing every extracurricular activity imaginable and studying at home until I thought my eyes would bleed, all so I could get into my dream school without a doubt. My graduate school plans and future career as a college English professor were taking shape similarly. In my family, I was the oldest and most dependable sibling; my parents never wondered where I was after my very brief rebellious stage at age sixteen. My life was mapped out.
It had only taken three words from a doctor at a free clinic on campus to change those things. Something was wrong; I felt it, and the blood tests reflected it. After a slew of tests, I ended up on an operating table having a procedure that was “completely routine,” and yet there was the risk that I might never have children of my own. My mother squeezed my hand. It didn’t mean as much to me at twenty-three as it does now, but it meant enough to have me frightened.
The first part of the procedure went successfully. But when the doctor reappeared looking less than relieved from a job-well-done (had he looked that haggard during our pre-op conversations? I wondered), I was filled with the kind of dread that only surfaces in cold hospital rooms that smell of harsh cleaning products and contain half-truthful doctors.
I’ve felt pain before, but never like that—like my insides were being skinned with a bread knife. I fought the urge to scream, but I did cry, like a baby. I also cried for the babies I might never have. The anesthetic had worn off, but the doctor insisted that only ten minutes remained. The pressure in my body rose to a fever pitch; I thought I might faint.
It was then that a strange thing happened.
My limbs slackened and I felt a cool wave of calm spread over me. I closed my eyes, and as though I was dreaming, I saw my own face amid a hundred other faces that looked nothing like mine. It looked like I was walking in Japan. A sense of relief and rightness filled my body; in that moment, I felt that it was my destiny to go to Japan and live there.
I’d love to tell you that it was a sure-sign from heaven and that my path unfurled before me like a neon arrow sign, but I can’t. The truth is, the image lasted mere seconds and I don’t know where it came from. God, the Universe, my Higher Self, my pain threshold?
I’d also love to say that I made an effort to move to Japan right away and wasted no time, but that’s not true either. I lost my sure footing and missed the deadlines for my graduate school application as well as the application to teach English in Japan again and again. I floated through meaningless jobs and buckled under the weight of my school debt and high California costs of living. In 2006, I had my entire application to teach in Japan completed—transcripts, references, statement of purpose. The deadline came and passed. I never sent it.
Why do we wait so long to live? I know, loaded question, right? But seriously, what’s the hold-up? This struck me on an October evening while I was ten hours into a shift at another meaningless job. Even if reincarnation exists, I will never be me again. Even if my “soul mate” appeared, I might not ever be able to have children. What was stopping me from going to Japan?
I sent in my application and waited with crossed fingers until I got the word—I had been accepted. I would teach English to Japanese elementary and junior high school students in a tiny farming town on Honshu, the main island of Japan. I don’t think I’d ever felt so exhilarated and so petrified in the same moment, but I spent the next three months packing up my life, preparing myself to give up everything I knew.
Since I arrived here nine months ago, I’ve discovered that I was wrong about a lot of things. I was wrong in my calculated mentality, which dictated that my life had to be mapped out before I could be happy. (As I write this, I’ve just come back from submitting my paperwork to teach here for an additional year, which was very much against the plan.)
I was wrong in thinking that a language barrier would be any barrier at all, as the friendships that have bloomed without words surprise me over and over. Kindness is a universal language, and there is no shortage of kindness in Japan.
But mostly, I was wrong in thinking that I might not have children.
I have 1,300 of them.
