Dreaming yesterday, I said to myself, “Oh… this is not Japan.” It was a dream all set in Japan, and I realised this place, where I am in reality, was not Japan. How can I explain this? I have experienced a half-awake-half-asleep state so many times. But yesterday it should have been more like a 2/3-awake-1/3-asleep state. I reminded my dreaming self of the reality. How strange.
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If you have unresolved grief over past humiliation, disappointment, anger and anxiety for insecurity about the present and future and roll all into one, what you get is clinical depression or unipolar disorder.Prejudice persists about unipolar and bipolar (manic depressive) disorders as Andrew Solomon clearly shows us in his narrative about a friend who underwent electro convulsive therapy (ECT). When people learned that someone has cancer, they automatically understand the severity of the matter even though they possess no knowledge of mechanisms of cancer cells. These days, celebrities even convene press conferences to announce the diagnoses. People sympathise and never say, “Hmmm, you have cancer. Don’t worry. Why don’t you cheer up?”
Say, “Cheer up and be happy” to a depressive. He or she certainly and instantly knows you don’t know at all how debilitating depression can be. Or worse, say, “you’re just making excuses for your laziness and irresponsibility.” I’m sure the unlucky patient goes down even further, feeling humiliated. Some say that the death rate from depression is as high as 15-20%. With no exception, they die a despairing death.
I really don’t have many things to write here because Solomon and, in the case of bipolar, Kay Redfield Jamison are so eloquent. However, looking back at my own recent past, a type of feeling that has greatly affected me is one of betrayal. Another is huge disappointment and disgust I feel when the authority of those whom I respect broke into pieces especially right before my own eyes.
Depressives naturally find it hard to confide their conditions to others. I guess their stories are often long, starting from their childhood. They find few, if any, people with whom they are comfortable enough to broach their stories. In any case, one wouldn’t start a conversation with saying, “My father was a murderer and mother was a whore.” If one can do this, it demonstrates iron trust existing between them. Well, even a depressive sometimes finds a confidant. For a depressive whose family life started, contributed or is still contributing to their condition, family members cannot be a confidant. For these depressives, a confidant is a person whom they love “romantically.” The warmth one can feel in love is an important ameliorating element. At first, depressives may be quiet even to their lovers. But once intimate with someone, a depressive breaks his or her own dam and water gushes out. At the same time, I must say that depressives, especially women, can be love-hoppers, constantly seeking intimacy even though this intimacy may be of a false kind and in turn they often regret unwise moves later, exacerbating their condition further.
With all due respect to my ex-girlfriend and appreciation to every kind of help that she, who is also the owner of my current apartment, has provided me to this day, I must say the following. Sometime after I started counselling and medication, I brought her, who was my girlfriend then and to whom I had already gushed out, to the clinic because the doctor suggested it and I agreed it would help. When I asked her days later what she learned by meeting her, she said, “Nothing.” And she also said to me many months later, “I can’t cope (with your depression).” My feeling of betrayal was profound. My attitude towards her changed at the very moment and I stopped explaining my condition to her. I found out that she has no willingness to learn about depression even as a general idea.
When I stayed home, benighted night and day, to her I was just “relaxing.” Sure, at home with no work to get done, I had a lot of time. However, she missed the point far and wide when she said, “Since you have time now, why don’t you do this or that?” If I could be so active doing this or that, I would not have depression. Simply being with someone who is caring and understanding makes things much easier. Is it that the problem with her is her lack of vocabulary or her direct and fierce, bordering on being rude, way of speech? Is it that she doesn’t know how to talk to people in a considerate manner? Does she talk to others in the same way? Or only to me?
On his website, a Japanese doctor posted his answer to a question sent from a man whose girlfriend is depressive. In sum, the doctor’s answer was; Leave it to her family. If her family is dysfunctional? If her family is the cause of her depression? If she doesn’t have any family member? Where or whom should she turn to?
And authority in shatters. (The following story is mostly a recap of what I wrote in Japanese in August last year.) This is the man who originally asked me to come to this country. By then I had known him for about ten years. Despite the age difference between us, we got along with each other. We shared interests. He asked me to come to fill a vacant position, of course. However, he had his own motive. He was scheming to steal business from the company. To make it easy, he needed my cooperation.
Alas, working with him was not so easy. He didn’t listen to any sort of criticism. Of course he didn’t accept complaints from clients. As a translator, he was very careless. It became my job to pick up what he dropped. One day, a client, a world-famous news agency, complained about his work, saying it was “unreadable.” Our sales guy criticised him because this old man even didn’t try to be nice to the client. Obviously his pride was hurt. This man, over 50 then, even shed some tears over this incident. Tears of remorse? No, tears for his cheap pride. On the spot, he decided to return to Japan. I also learned that he had clashed with my predecessor and effectively pushed her out. I sympathised with her.
After he decided to leave, we started a large scale project for a US investment bank. We needed many translators to complete the job. What he did was to collect about 15 translators he knew back in Japan. The boss was so grateful and asked me to help him. Help him? This was not the first time the boss said that to me. Why should I help such a careless translator with a shameless attitude?
Very unfortunately, with an exception or two, the people he gathered here had no experience of working as translators! They were just his “students”! Correcting their “negative contribution” to the project, once again I found myself a garbage picker. Meanwhile, he was so happy surrounded by his students, almost all of them young women. I felt the kind of loathing I had never had toward anyone before.
Much later, I met someone who told me about a hapless interpreter who attended a large event held at a Sentosa hotel. The interpreter simply couldn’t follow the first speaker and was replaced by an attendee who knew far more about the topic. I know it was him… And he kept quiet about what happened.
On the home front. When I came here, he was renting a small room from a colleague. His idea was to pass it to me and find a new place for himself. I’m not renowned for tidiness, but the room was impossible! And the smell! It was that smell of a human being without proper bathing. I, determined not to live in the room, didn’t unpack my suitcase.
Within a week after I arrived, and with our friendship still intact, we found a nice enough place. In the transition period of moving, we visited the new place for no important reason. On the bus to return to the smelly room, he said, “I left documents in the new place!” No choice, we got off the bus at the next stop and returned. On another bus to go back, he said, “I left the key in the office…” Because we were not sure whether we could enter the building at such a late hour, we went ahead to our colleague’s apartment. No way to enter. I kept knocking the door quietly hoping that the colleague, his wife or little daughter would notice. After a few hours, he came to the door for rescue. I almost had to spend the night outside in a residential area of this almost-developed country. Such a nice way to start my new life here.
We started living together. I didn’t care about his own room. But, I would mop the living room every weekend. Nor surprisingly at all, he didn’t care what crumb he dropped while eating or how dirty the living room became. I gave up and stopped the mopping routine. Why should I pick up his garbage, on work and off work? I began to ignore him.
There was an arrangement over mail collection between the apartment owner and him, the contract counterpart. The mailboxes were located on the ground floor. The owner asked him to leave all mail sent to her and her family in the box, so it would be unnecessary for her to come up for collection to the seventh floor where we stayed. It was a very reasonable request. One day, her daughter, who acted as our main contact, came to collect mail as her mother was expecting something important. She found the box was empty. Unable to find the old man, she called me but I knew nothing about the arrangement.
It was the New Year’s Day in 2001. As soon as I opened the apartment front door, coming back from Japan, he appeared before me and said, “I almost had an accident…” I thought “Poor man, maybe he got almost hit by a car or something…” Nothing of the kind! He started a fire in the kitchen and permanently damaged the cabinet. He clumsily tried to paint the damaged cabinet, which created an ugly sight. “I almost had an accident”? It could have happened much earlier. Before then, at least two occasions, I turned off the gas with a pan with water, boiling and evaporating, above the fire. He left the apartment, having completely forgotten about the water. This old man never says “sorry,” and anything inconvenient he hides. For some time after the “accident,” he was trying to prevent the owner or her daughter from visiting, fearing they would find the damage. Appalling shamelessness. The owner understandably decided to kick him out. And with him, me also. A child of around 4-years old starts the art of cheating and still needs parents’ supervision, just like this old man. While we were preparing to empty the apartment, he seemed to decide to clean the living room. One year too late. He watered the floor. With a lot of dust in the room, it was all muddy.
When he left for Japan, there was absolutely no word to me from him.
The company retained him as an outside translator. He yet again infuriated me over a large volume of work from a Japanese telco, and because of this, my depression worsened. It became very hard for me to show up to work. It was 200% obvious that he passed at least part of the work to one or more of his “students.” We already know what sort of students he is producing. However, it is just unbelievable any Japanese adult with decent knowledge does not know how to render the word, “Delhi” in his or her mother tongue. The quality of the work was such that I had to go over it word by word. I worked at home when it was so difficult to go out, even for work. I believe that the boss doesn’t know how I was working then.
In late 2002 or early 2003, I came across an internet message board the topic of which was him! There, many were attacking his “theory” on English grammar that he “created” for his “students” and uploaded to his website. Oh, he, with his wrong pride in the wrong place, was responding to them in the way fitting to him. His cheap pride was stained and torn to pieces again and he couldn’t put up with it. He was totally losing his temper. He is quite an example not follow and a big disappointment for me personally.
I almost forgot to add this fine episode. When we were still sharing his smelly room, he said, “Laundry detergent sold here is really no good.” I only replied, “Is that so?” After we moved to the new place, I found this word in large print on his “detergent” container: BLEACH. Are you really a translator?
And another… I had considered myself “locally hired,” thus accepting a so-called local package of employment. But then I was not looking for a position here. It is the company that approached me through the old baby. Talking on the phone before I came, he was saying, “Lunch costs only three dollars, and such and such amount of money for salary should be enough. And you, a single man, can even save money!” More precisely, I was headhunted in Japan and therefore should have been treated as such. This old baby is totally impossible.
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