Page 66 of I Never Said I Love You

My building was quiet. Most students had left for Thanksgiving already, and for once there was no bass thumping from behind any of the doors, no shouts, no laughter, nothing but the silence of my tears and the red of my eyes as I followed through on the last, hardest task. I turned on the computer in my bedroom, the one I had been working at the night Nao Kao changed the rules of the game, and signed into AIM. As I had hoped would be the case, he wasn’t online.

“Nao Kao, this has to stop. You’ve become obsessed, and it’s starting to scare me.”

I told myself I was doing him a kindness, doing us a kindness. I had considered my choices; I didn’t like any of them, but this was the right one, of that I was certain. It was for the best. It was the only way. Come what may, I owned this decision entirely, and even in that heartbreaking moment, was grateful for that ray of light, that sliver of autonomy.

I clicked through the settings and blocked his account, then went a step further and blocked anyone with whom I was not already buddies from sending a message request. I flipped open my email and blocked his address.

Casual cruelties hurled through space, and all contact severed. Allpossibilityof contact severed. At the time I was certain: it was the best I could do. Lot’s wife might have turned to a pillar of salt, but I had no such worries. What the weight of those final words might cost Nao Kao never crossed my mind.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

How I madeit through that holiday weekend, through a Thanksgiving table undoubtedly piled with turkey and trimmings, more classic holiday sides than I could count, and ringed by faces from near and far, international students, many of them, and each a reminder of the man I had just left, I will simply never know. On Sunday night, as the rest of the world dove headlong into the heart of the holiday season, I steeled myself for the inevitable.

«Je ne dois qu’avaler quelques pilules,»I told myself mechanically, in French, placing that much more distance between me and what was happening, the same way, since childhood, I tended to inscribe the biggest, hardest thoughts into my journals in my second language. I just need to swallow a couple of pills. My appointment was Monday morning.

I penned the last words into the journal I had kept all year, the one that recorded my conversations with Nao Kao, my newfound knowledge of Laos and photography, of motorbikes and temples, of runaway inflation and cigarettes sold by the penny, of cows that met their end when their hoof struck a mine, and guardian spirits, and everything else he had taught me over the past year.

I must learn not to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. I must teach myself not only to forgive, but to forget. I must remember my dreams. I dream of traveling the world, of earning a PhD, of a lifetime of writing.

Sometime in the middle of that fitful night, the cramps came, stronger than any I’d ever known, and with them the unmistakable wetness that sent me rushing half-asleep into the bathroom. Relief flooded through me, mingling with those fraternal twins, sadness and anger. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Even the end had slipped beyond my control, the streaks of red presenting themselves in the small hours as if to mock me despite the solution they presented.

Daylight seeping into my conscience as the past seeped out, I repeated the lesson to myself: I would learn to forget. Ever the star pupil, my brain complied, both effortlessly and aggressively erasing entire patches of my memory. Like floodwaters surging over a dam, sluicing away all before them, so too that night did the blood and the tears stake their claim, their torrent utterly sweeping away territory I have yet to reclaim.

The flood has long receded, but the rocks of my mind remain barren. That last cruel message, for example, the one I forced Nao Kao to carry with him, is but a fuzzy film in my mind. He tells me that is what I wrote, and I trust him implicitly. It certainly sounds like what I would have said at the time.

To his credit, he did not try to find me, not then. I finished the semester in a daze and collected my diploma through the mail.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

I was drawingstares from the passengers around me. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the flight attendants made another final sweep of the cabin, and passengers stretched their legs or restowed belongings in the overhead bins or used the lavatory one last time.

There are over twenty thousand monks in Laos, a country with a total population of some seven million people that is roughly twice the size of Pennsylvania. To ordain as a monk in a high honor in the Laotian culture, and somewhere in the neighborhood of one-third of all males will, at some point in their lives, do so. Nao Kao did: whence, I believe, his preternatural calm. All boys of the Lao ethnicity are expected to become novice monks for a period of at least three months in their lives, so it came as no surprise that there was a score or more of monks on this flight.

The one behind me gently tapped my shoulder and offered me a tissue. I wiped my eyes, then removed my mask to blow my nose. As I turned in my seat to thank him, I thought of the story of the monks that Catherine shared when I finally came clean with her about what happened all those years ago – and why I was the only one of our circle who changed her name when she married, who didn’t even wrestle with the decision of whether to do so.

A couple of monks travel down a muddy road and come across a lovely girl who is unable to cross through the mud. The older monk does not hesitate to pick the girl up and carry her over the mud. Hours of silence later, the younger monk finally chastises his elder, reminding him of their vow not to go near females, and especially not those who are young and lovely.

“It’s dangerous,” he ranted, “why did you do it?”

The older monk looks at the younger one calmly, quizzically, and replies, “I let her go hours ago. Are you still carrying her?”

It’s all very Zen, you see, a lesson in letting go of attachment to the abstract and the importance of making decisions based on kindness and immediate need and not allowing the past to weigh you down.

“Be a monk,” Catherine said to me, and then she let me cry.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

“Good morning, ladiesand gentlemen. We have begun our final descent into Vientiane International Airport. Please make sure your seatbacks are locked and upright and your tray tables are stowed. Flight attendants will be coming through the aisle to collect any remaining service items. If you have not yet received a customs form, you may ask for one at this time. We will be landing shortly.”

I lifted the window shade to see the sun just beginning to rise over the curve of the earth. In that moment I was reminded of both how big and how small this planet is. I watched the sky being bled of night, indigo giving way to violet and rose, tangerine and peach. I thought back to the advice a friend gave me as I beat myself up over the debacle with Jake.

“You have to keep looking forward in hope, Liss, not backward in regret. If you keep your face to the sun, the shadows will always fall behind you.”

I could not help but wonder, again, for the millionth time, whether he would be there, waiting at arrivals. Despite the promises of months ago to never be mad with any of what happened, and implicitly with me, I knew there was every possibility that I had finally traveled a bridge too far, pushed even Nao Kao’s patience beyond the breaking point. I knew Stacy thought it was possible.

“Say that again, Liss. I lost you there for a minute.”

We were on FaceTime, and this was at least the third time the screen had frozen. I was back on the road again, spotty internet just one of the hazards I faced. God willing and the creek don’t rise, I would be walking down the jet bridge in an hour, wheels up in less than two, bound for a place far, far from home.

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