Our Land: Sometimes You Have to Save Yourself

Today’s Our Land Series post was written by my friend Zoe of Rewritten. Zoe is one of those very rare blog friends who remember moments, reaches out, and privately offers encouragement and support. I admire her a lot, and appreciate her friendship so much. I’m sure I don’t do a very good job of letting her know that regularly, so will say now that she’s simply awesome. She’s been through a lot. Of course, she’ll be the first to dismiss that, but trust me that she has. She’s wonderful, and is finishing a BOOK. I can’t wait to read it. 

I think her Our Land contribution today speaks for itself…

Sometimes You Have to Save Yourself

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that wasn’t true. I was not tired physically…No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
– Rosa Parks

My friends seem worried. I want to assure them that I’m not giving up. Throughout my life I’ve had difficulty giving in, even when I knew I should. I’m not giving in now. I can understand how after years of watching me persevere that they might misinterpret my true intent, but I’m just readying myself to accept, and, on some level, I am learning to yield. The person who taught me the most about being flexible and learning to change continues to teach me these things, despite his physical absence. People we love are like that though. Aren’t they? They can be dead and gone, and yet because of the unique ability to forge long-term memories, we can recall, and even learn new things from their continued presence in our lives.

A few months ago, I wrote a guest post about the death of my life partner, Tseering. We hadn’t been married, but had been together for about 15 years. He was a Tibetan national living in the United States after escaping his country for fear he would be further persecuted if he stayed. He was raised and died a devout Buddhist. As a man who respected all life, Tseering taught me that same veneration. With a ball jar in hand, intent on capture and release, he would chase after moths, not because I found them annoying as hell, but rather because he knew they weren’t likely to survive indoors.

Tseering was an artist. He made paper and jewelry – sculpting intricate designs in silver. The hands that created this art were those of a peaceful man, and often revealed what he may have been thinking at any given time. When feeling particularly introspective or anxious, he would stare at his hands as if they had just materialized at the ends of his wrists. “Hmmm, how did those get there?” Even if I were the one causing his angst, it made me smile to see the wonder-filled expression at how these ridiculous looking appendages came to be popping out the ends of his sleeves. Slowly, after some thought, he would begin speaking as he began the deliberate process of running the thumb and fingers of his left hand over his right. He was a lefty.

He avoided nothing. Throughout his life, Tseering made incredibly difficult choices that most of us will never have to face. Not knowing if he would ever be released, he decided to do what he felt was right despite the oppression enforced by the government under which he was born. He educated the local people in his village and was detained for splitist behavior against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned for three years. Shortly after Tseering’s release, and in hopes of reaching freedom on the other side, he took his life in his hands to cross the Himalayas on foot.

When people leave Tibet, it is a secretive affair. There is no airplane, or bus ticket. One hires a “people smuggler” who will hopefully not betray you to the authorities and will guide you on a potentially deadly journey, over one of the most treacherous mountain ranges in the world.  After reaching the U.S., Tseering began a new life. He worked hard and continued to face his new situation without skirting the difficulty of a new language and culture. In his birthplace he was an educated man. In his new home, he lived in the street until he earned enough to rent an apartment by doing laundry and clock repair.

Tseering went through life with the thoughtfulness and careful precision dictated by his contemplative nature. The ability to laugh with and love me, despite my often bull-in-the-china-shop approach, is what most endeared him to me. Shortly after his liberation from Tibet, he met me in a laundromat in Massachusetts. He was still struggling with cultural differences. He hadn’t had the experience of a large grocery store, and, in fact, had just stopped going back to a shelter after work each day. This combination of social naiveté and poverty left him vulnerable to the mischievous antics of one idiotic American with an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. Long story short, I had him convinced he would be decapitating and cleaning a turkey large enough to feed ten people. No easy task for a pacifist from a country that doesn’t eat birds. Thank goodness for all that meditation keeping him calm or we would have never had a future!

We built a life together. We both had baggage and cultural challenges, but we built. We had a major health crisis with the threat of chronic and then terminal illness, and we coped. I felt fortunate that all our problems were at least manageable with the two of us together, and the familiarity of living in my own environment.

That sense of security ended the day Tibet came to America. We received notification that Tseering’s mother had died. His father had died three years before in prison for a charge similar to Tseering’s. Tseering was now faced with the decision to return to his country to secure help for his developmentally delayed brother. Their mother’s death had unintentionally left his brother alone. We agonized with uncertainty, but again we came to it together. The night before he returned to Tibet, I promised to not go looking for him if for some unknown reason he were to lose contact with me.  This didn’t sit well with me, knowing he could die crossing the mountains, or be killed or imprisoned if he were to be found by the government, but we both knew my health wouldn’t allow for Tibet.

Two weeks before he was to return home and the night of an uprising for Tibetan independence at a nearby monastery, Tseering and his brother went missing.

It has been six years of searching and I still have no definitive answers. I didn’t keep to the letter of the law on my promise, and I think we have located the brothers. Nothing is definite, but they are believed to be dead.

I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m utterly fatigued with frustration, anger and despair. Despite not having proof, I have no hope for his return, and so I am giving up. It is not defeat. It is exhaustion, pure and simple, exhaustion. I will hold my memories and my love for Tseering always, but it’s time for me to back away from the causes that surrounded his disappearance. I’ve been active in amnesty organizations and social justice as it relates to Tibet and other countries, and will most likely continue on some lesser level to do so. I know I cannot indefinitely close my eyes to hundreds who in protest have set themselves on fire in Tibet. It’s not possible to forget their desperation. I may not be burning, but I am burnt. Tseering would be the first to encourage me to care for myself. He would be first to take my hand and lead me away from the flames.

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Thank you, Zoe, for bravely sharing your story. I am so deeply saddened by the horrifying and heartbreaking reality that you, Tseering, his family, and all who are persecuted for voicing their beliefs are living. Today. Now.

I wish you peace and a continually healing heart.

Here’s more about today’s amazing author:

Zoe blogs under an assumed name. She has an inordinate love for her dog Skip for whom she started her first blog Tale of a Caniche. When not working as a psychotherapist, she contributes to her more recent blog, rewritten dedicated to the eventual and shameless promotion of her book and other inanities. She also co-hosts a poetry blog with Lizzi the Considerer at The Well Tempered Bards.