Welcome, Panic

Dear jo,

G got an offer from a university. This is as close as we’ve gotten to deciding to move back to the US. And now I’m absolutely panicking!!! How can we possibly be considering moving away from what may be nearly the most affordable and high quality medical care in Taiwan, to one of the most expensive and complex and irksome systems of healthcare in the US??? I was sitting in a Health Policy course a couple weeks ago, and the professor was talking to us about how common it is for Taiwanese people living in the US to move back to Taiwan after getting diagnosed with a disease. How is it that we’re considering doing the exact opposite??!! What if we go through the tremendous effort and crazy-making stress of quitting jobs and moving cross-hemispheres, only to end up getting bound and bankrupt to achieve the feared outcome of my health deteriorating? Why and what if and how and what if and what if and endless what if?

Often it feels like my health is The Decider. That ultimately it has the final word, that it decides whether we go left or right, up or down, forward or backward or reverse. If the literal sense is supreme, then certainly this is true. And when I feel defeated, the truth of my health determining everything feels factual. But is it merely a desperate hope that suggests this isn’t the whole story, it is denial that demands there’s more to it than this? Or is it a kind of intuitive grace that permits a perception of more room and more space for glimpses of freedom and flexibility and good fortune amidst the tightly constrained?

Moving back to the US…. I think it would feel nice to release the challenge of living the foreigner lifestyle. But it stings that I’d just be passing it off to G., and for her to inherit such a thing in a much darker socio-political atmosphere. And I think it would feel nice to live in a place that’s quieter, and the air cleaner, and more space to walk and breathe and be. And I think it would be nice to live closer to some family and friends. …. But the unknowns feel big and scary right now, monstrous actually. And maybe we should just stay put and live our best lives here. Afterall, so much about here and now is actually wonderful.