Autopsy the Second

Yesterday I ran from Takemura (Bamboo Village) to Toyota Stadium, one way is just under 10km the return trip is 20km. I run with an ipod and an elastic knee support. I suspect the problem is not so much my knees but my shoes.
On my ipod called ipohd, I selected Music > Artist > Faith No More > All > Stripsearch > Play. This meant my playlist would cycle through all bar collision (which I've never liked as a first track on an album) of their 1997 release Album of the Year, then the next album in alphabetical order Angel Dust.
All these things combined got me thinking many a thing, the running, the music, the environment wrapped around my nervous system and whatnot. They also sometimes resulted in me not thinking at all, which is very helpful when you are running just shy of 20km, in shoes designed for distances no greater than 1500m.
The shoes got me thinking because they are 6 or 7 years old, made by Nike in a sweatshop and holding up remarkably well. Sure most of the rubber studs are gone, but for the most part they are highly functional, I don't have any other shoes that would compare to the milage these bad boys have done, nor do I have many friends or companions as stalwart, which is to say, the shoes now have outlasted my last five relationships, and I would describe some of those as long term.
The music, Album of the Year, is the perfect album for capturing the mysterious process of grief and berievement. The wild mood swings, the stimulus, the conflict between reality and denial. I don't know if it was intended like this, but it certainly has that effect on me. Faith No More's first album I bought, was their last album released and the second Album I ever bought after Dangerous by Michael Jackson.
And lastly I am in Japan, running through the streets of Japan, a henna gaijin or crazy outsider, running in skimpy running clothes in the last week of autumn as bitter winter weather sets in, running distances most Japanese don't contemplate outside of forced endurance training sessions inside highschools.
What a perfect time to contemplate my last episode in love, rather my latest episode in love. My friend Shona, probably had two signifigant points on it, made when we caught up early on in Miki and my dalliance and then again within a week of 'the end' if indeed there are ever endings so final.
The first comment was 'setting yourself up for heartbreak' this was when I knew Miki was returning to Japan (but didn't know how soon) and Shona did cut to the bone of the issue, from the get go on Miki's third date with me she had expressed her trepidation that this was her first cross cultural relationship, and she was very nervous about it. I told her it was the same for me, and that I too whilst being nervous was also partly excited about it.
An expectation of failure can go miles in reducing the risk of an endeavour. Being that failure was so likely, there was little to stand in the way of seeing where it went, I had no serious 'grief' episode after the relationship was all done and dusted, and I expect part of that was a lesson learned from the last relationship about the nature of love, control, relationships and life. But another part was that it had always been understood that this was the probabal outcome.
Does that mean I didn't really care? No. I cared a lot, I was just more able to recognise that it was a decision I didn't have much control over.
Does that mean I contributed nothing to its downfall? I don't think that could ever be true, but I do know this, a failure of a relationship need not be related to the failure on the part of the individuals within it. Blame gets us nowhere, but I think it worth examining what I know of the choice that was made that ultimately ended our relationship. A little background is probably necessary for although a lot of my friends met misaki and certainly in most cases warmed to her straight away, the brevity of the relationship probably prevented many from knowing her well (myself included).

Miki was in Australia studying Materials Design at Box Hill, she had just about completed first year when I met her, with a remaining year left to study. I met her the day after my 23rd birthday. We saw eachother once a week after meeting, and then pretty much dated full time after that, with one or so day off.
Significant incidents were her revealing that her part time work was not at a thai restaurant (that she had forebade me to eat at nor know where it was) but instead at a thai massage parlour. This lie caught me offgaurd because it was completely unnecessary. Like when I read about the wife of an Alcoholic talking about his compulsive lying resulting in lies about things of no concequence, like what movies he had seen.
The second was her concealing the fact that she was moving out, in order to return to Japan, for fear that I would up and leave, she told me her parents had demanded her return with just under a month left to enjoy her company. Here we resolved that I would visit her in Japan, and she whilst not completing her course was going to return to Australia on a Holiday visa and stay with me for 3 months.
And lastly during her return to renew her visa, Misaki took a job paying $700 a month in Tokushima a remote part of Shikoku island, by all means pretty but considered a backwater in Japan, that started in April (instead of her original departure date of July) without any heads up or consultation with me whatsoever.

And I guess that ultimately was the decision. The breakup came 3 or 4 months later, and it barely effected me, I felt slightly rejected, but it was so insignificant in terms of fallout that my mother hadn't even realised we'd broken up until I departed Australia 2 months later and I realised I'd neglected to tell her.
I think the strongest feeling I felt, was embarassment. The person I most didn't want to tell was Miho, my work colleague who had introduced us and more or less effectively set us up.
I felt like I had let people down. Other than that, my thoughts of Misaki were actually quite joyous (oh for those that haven't clicked Misaki = Miki) almost everything she said was worthy of hilarious impersonation, her caring nature, her ability to make friends so quickly and endearingly were all that I can remember.
Our break up was more or less purely cultural.
And now, that its over, I would be entirely transparent if I said that 'I'm over her' or 'I don't love her' because it is plain to me that I do. But this is a lesson well learned over and over again. It is pretty hard for me to stop loving someone, and the social pressure to do so pretty much never helps and infact exacerbates the breakup process. I think the most important thing in a breakup is how you choose to behave, not trying to control the emotions and feelings you have.
For sure everyone will agree that watching your ex hook up with someone else doesn't help you love them any less, nor does it spare you any pain. But the feelings aren't the point, the behaviour is that you are confronting the brutal facts.
And in this case the facts are brutal.

Miki's choice:

stay in Australia, with boyfriend, getting educated in desired career path, live in nice apartment (nicer than I can maintain on my own), live close to city, quit smoking, started exercising, have friends from Australia and Japan.

or

Go to Japan, work in the middle of nowhere selling jewellery door to door, pay is $700 a month, rent not included, take up smoking, drop education, work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, no friends, no family, live by self.

I don't know how much the massage gig paid (she quit after confronting revelations surfaced, at which my disclosure in the past has landed me in the shit) but I'm pretty sure $700 a month isn't exactly a draw card anywhere outside of Mexico or the Balkan states or some shit.
The choice to me, or you I hope would seem quite obvious (although you might think dating me tips the balance in Japan's favour) but it is how she chose, I haven't sugar coated or put any bias into the decision, just the brutal facts.
And when I have more or less explained this to my good friend Shona, she probably summed up the sentiment aswell as anyone myself included could 'I feel sorry for her'.
This is the first time I've been dumped for purely cultural reasons. But if I look at my own contribution, it is that I didn't meet her half way, Miki actually optimistically thought that our relationship would survive the one year hiatus while she worked this Japanese test of self sacrifice. I didn't give it a chance in hell, it was only later that Misaki realised that it would be ludicrous for me to trade in my prospects in Australia, to become a low paid english teacher in Japan, that the relationship had no future, and hence, she broke up with me.
So admittedly for Miki, the decision or choice wasn't based on clear cut reasoning, it was covered all in Japanese pixi fluff, there were assumptions there that we would communicate regularly, that she would have time to visit me, that I would wait my year patiently then visit her in Shizuoka her home town.
None of these occured, I had a say in only the last point. She was very upset, and I felt very guilty, until I realised that I had picked the dates to fall on my birthday, our anniversary and her birthday and new years, all dates of significance to her. I had been very thoughtful in the whole plan, she however had agreed to work a job she hates with little practical consideration at all.
It doesn't stop me from feeling, but nor does it dictate the way I behave. Her ability to take annual leave? 'impossible', her ability to visit her home town with me? 'impossible', her ability to leave work early while I was there? 'impossible'.
The relationship? 'impossible'

And this is where it all goes from personal to cultural. The choice is skewed completely by Misaki's culture imperitives. 'impossible' itself draws on two dominant parts of Japanese culture (here I am criticising Japan again when I avowed to stop) the first is 'Muri' this literally means, 'impossible' and is commonly used by young girls to dismiss a suggestion, it more represents 'I don't want to' which is what you'd say if you wanted to be upfront and accept responsibility, but impossible absolves you, so of course 'muri' is the word of choice.
The second word is 'sho-gania' which is literally 'it can't be helped' the most unempowered statement there is. 'There's nothing I can do about it' the problem is that such expressions are used in English in cases such as where someone or something has died, or some amount of money has been lost on some truly unforeseeble tragedy. In Japan, it is used on just about everything, including the vast majority of things that certainly can be helped.
Such as I have used when I have moved on from a place I have stayed, even when I clearly have made the decision that I'm bored and it's time to move on, my Japanese hosts interpret it as some allusion to the greater designs of a cosmic creater.
So the mindset of Miki is a very unempowered one, she often professed to me that she begged her parents not to bring her home, to let her enjoy her life while she was young.
Which is a funny thing to do, when you have financed your own education in a foreign country, have half priced rent by sharing an apartment with your boyfriend and being 25 years old. Yet in Misaki's mind, if her parents wish her home, who is she to disobey, the best part she can play in the decision making process is to beg her parents to see her point of view.
I for one, if my parents asked me to come home and help the family business, would laugh in their fucking faces. We aren't talking about caring for a disabled loved one, we are talking about working a shitty career.
I'd do it even if they were paying my rent.
To be fare it isn't all robotic programming on Misaki's part, the cultural imperative is such, that Misaki probably rightly weighed up, that the pain of losing your boyfriend of 5 months (at the time) would be far less than the pain of the treatment she would recieve losing her family of 25 years.
For me I felt helpless, infuriatingly helpless, if you want to talk about picking battles, then the rule is only pick battles you can win. I now reconsider this position, because I did almost nothing to intervene except indirectly express my doubts over the wisdom of the course Misaki was taking.
I instead decided that rather than sour our relationship by getting between Miki and her family, I should stay on the outer.
In a way this alludes to my other bitter pill I swallowed in the whole process. The relationship between me and Miki's mother I assume is imperative to maintain as part of the quality of Miki & my relationship. Hence I did my upmost to pray proper respect for the relationship she had with Miki, despite me never having met nor talked with her.
Yet Misaki's mother behaves in a way that causes me to conclude that she pays me no respect at all.
Even when I had made the effort to traverse across the globe and out to Shikoku to catch up with Misaki in the evenings after work and at breakfast before work (and otherwise entertain myself) she had no problem in calling Misaki to discuss some triviality for an hour and a half whilst Misaki made apologetic signs at me.
Now I didn't feedback to Misaki that when she answered her phone in my presence I felt like she was telling me that I wasn't important. (which is probably true) Never have I seen such blatent disregard for almost everything that Misaki's mother seems to show. I truly have to meet this remarkable woman.
I optimistically guestimate that she has little to no consciousness of what she is doing, is actually a nice sweet person (like Misaki) and infact another tragic progeny of the same cultural programming that Misaki is victim to.
Do I feel angry about the whole thing? Yes. Emphatically yes. Anger is probably all I have felt since I stopped feeling embarrassed.
I fear that Misaki's decision, based on cultural pretext, instead of facts, will be regrettable, and in that regard some small anticipation of her having a sudden 'revelation' stalls my being in a condition I guess you would say is 'over it'.
I listened as Misaki told me her story, that her families business is in crisis, that when she was younger she expressed that she didn't want to follow in her mother or sisters footsteps and enter the business. That her sister was the one to take the leadership. That her sister is almost 30, has no boyfriend, no life, just work and that's why Misaki wants to support her.
That's the story. But add to that Misaki's own ambitions: her dream is to run an international business, she wants to have a child and be a mother.
She feels in her mothers business she has inherited a 'golden ticket', I feel a family business in crisis, managed by your sister (who took a struggling company and ran it into the ground) and subsequently set off a revolt in the senior experienced staff, is not a golden ticket but a bucket of shit.
Where she sees a perfectly reasonable course of action, I see a patch of ground so clearly littered with landmines, so many challangeable assumptions, that I have to pinch the bridge of my nose to stop a non constructive outburst.
Once did I challange these assumptions, because of Misaki's ambitions primarily, she wants to support her sister, her sister is working as hard as ever, still single, still no child. The difference of Misaki's support is that now, she too is single, almost thirty and works all day.
She is as yet to make a dent on her sisters problem and has infact doubled it.
She is too 'pure of heart' to ever conclude that her sister shouldn't be managing the business (the one assumption I did challange her on, to disastorous effect, and recieved a stinging rebuke [that still made little to no sense]) so I wonder, that that one day, when Miki is 35, single, and the bank won't lone the shop any more money. Will Miki then weigh up what was the golden ticket, and what the bucket of shit?
That I guess is the question that haunts me, has me cornered. And I haven't made any progress on it, because nobody likes being told what to do. Certainly not Misaki.
But this autopsy wouldn't be an autopsy unless I got to the cause of death, and that in part can be answered by the cause of life.
Why did I like Misaki? Why did I fall in love with her?
By the time I met Misaki, I had already concluded that I neither wanted to work nor live in Japan, Japanese girls where more to the point, too complacent, too unambitious for me. When Miho introduced Misaki to me, I more or less ignored her.
Miho probably infact said the worst thing that could be said about a girl to me... 'Misaki is kawaii (cute) ne?' and that just about summed up my reservations, she was too cute. I was looking for a women, not a girl.
And yet when I saw her, I did sit up and take notice, not because she was cute, she was, but not just cute, she was also beautiful, I think Misaki is one of those rare beauties that you can see how they simultaneously will be a beautiful little girl and a beautiful old lady.
As I got to know Misaki, she was just thoroughly charming, and disarming. She was upfront most of the time (the annoying habit of keeping secrets and making snap decisions on big important issues of course) but would let you know how she felt, and rebuke me at every instant.
I keep remembering again and again, on our second date, her consternation that she 'can't stop kissing you', nor will I ever forget, waking up in her uncomfortable bed at 6am in Prahran on a work day, and seeing her get up, climb into a tracksuit and then I hear the noises of her pulling my bike from the side of the house out the gate onto the pavement for me. Or when she cried at the christmass party, because she felt she was doing such a bad job of talking and making conversation with my work friends.
She was just beautiful, through and through. Singularly selfless, I don't think her decision was selfish at all. I think she honestly did it for love, just a form of love I find undesirable and she finds indespensible.
At RYLA we did an exercise where you throw a ball to someone and then you have to say 'name is complement' until everyone in the circle has done it. I find this a particularly powerful exercise. I said 'Prue is a geniunely loving person' the point of the exercise isn't about making other people feel better, it can be charmingly embarrassing as well.
The point is once everyone has said something nice about everybody else, the ball goes back round the circle in order and you have to say 'I am compliment' and when you see what people say about themselves, the shoe fits everytime. And that is because of the simple reason that the good qualities we easily see in somebody else, are the good qualities we possess.
If I love Misaki because of her unwavering selflessness, I think that says something about me, although I'm sure most people would agree that I am a big white elitist aggressive arsehole, and Misaki is a small cute yellow bubbly kitten.
Misaki was good for me, because I stepped back, took it easy and just lived my life with her. She made the moment now very beautiful. Even having a ticking clock hanging above our heads, just made us try harder to enjoy our time together. It was very much about what each could bring to the table, to build a greater whole.
The problem is that when you say there is more to life than work, there is also love. People can forget that the reverse in this particular use of logic must also be true. There is more to life than love, there is also work.
I know I need both to prosper and be happy, Miki may have been perfect as a partner in love, but the fact is we just cant pursue our career goals together. Whilst I fear the outsider statis that one with my prominent narrow face and golden hair obtains working in Japan, the other possibility is sadly clouded by Misaki's cultural obligation (one she doesn't object to in the slightest) preventing her from pursuing a career and life proximate to mine.
Yes I obviously still love Misaki, and this probably has a bearing as to my decision making on other partners, probably the main symptom will be that potential candidates are not 'misaki like enough' but these symptoms will fade, either with time and pragmatic consideration, or when the next girl at a party makes me sit up and pay attention.
So the autopsy, the lesson learned though is this, just because someone is a good person, doesn't mean they are good for you.