Connection

I came home last night, merry, and S was there, one of my favourite people in the hostel. She was leaving the guesthouse and Osaka, returning home to smalltown Japan after four years and we talked about it a little, we joked, tickled, awkward across cultures. The clown of the house, she was the most outward looking, the laughing one, the imitator, the one who first made us feel welcome. Recently, I'd been frustrated by her clownishness - it seemed impossible to actually come to know her at all; our conversations were glancing, transit talk. But this time, for once, there was no-one else around and we talked with more ease - she'd stayed up all night packing and was about to do it for the second night. We made smalltalk about her departure and her graduation that day - the streets were filled with girls in kimonos, lightstepping, filling the lines at McDonalds - and then she left to go and pack and I sank a little, another lost opportunity to actually talk. A few minutes later she returned, loitered, and we talked again, first about the children at my kindergarten and then about whether she would ever have children and then I asked whether she had a boyfriend, because she was secretive about such things. She said no and then started telling me about her old boyfriends, oldest to newest, but the closer to the present she came, the more she began to stumble and defer and guide conversation away. Then she began to cry, softly, her makeup washing down her face and she leant inwards to cover her shame with her hair.

All the time she cried, she apologised for crying, for losing face, for exposing her pain. She would not tell me what had happened to make her grieve so deeply but she skirted it well enough to trace the outlines. A boy, a heartbreak, damage, a wound that she covered. But what she alluded to was more than simple heartbreak, it was pain writ large and huge, something more, something bigger, something which had to be concealed. She told me of manufacturing the clown version of herself as her outward face - how Japanese! - because she did not want people to think of her as the one who was always mourning or hurting. The outpouring made it through her uneven english on the power of emotions buried too well. It was incredible - if she had left without this happening, I would not have really known her at all. I tried to persuade her that the pain must surface, that the only way out is through, and that it was impossible do it alone, but against the defences she'd erected, it was hard to make cliche sound like truth. Ah, it is hard to write this without being trite. But I felt so privileged that she had allowed me to see her like this, so lucky. The intensity is hard to describe, this unveiling, this baring and racking weeping. It was a connection, a real one - a world away from her daytime persona, our glancing conversations.

I left her alone at three am or so, and she packed the rest of the night. I hoped that we could talk again, she was to leave in three days, but time was too short, her parents arrived today and packed her up and took her away early and now, on the edge of some truth, something real, nothing. It's made me a little sad, a little happy - a fine balance of bittersweet maudlinery, of glancing lives and the intensity of now and I wish there was more time, just a little, just enough, because it was such a privilege to watch her unfold, just a little.