Moving (Pt.11)

On the way back, though the sub-landlord still hadn’t replied, I was already certain—this would be my next dwelling.

Because I realized that the two apartments I had wavered over again and again were merely foreshadowings, set in place to point toward this one.

When I returned to the place in Sant Martí, no one was home. I cooked something to fill my stomach, then slept in my room for more than an hour. Upon waking, I turned back to my computer.

Then someone came in. My nerves, involuntarily, tightened again.
After a while—dong dong dong!—a malicious knock intruded upon my little space.
I rose unwillingly and opened the door. It was the landlady.

“Can’t you at least flush after using the toilet?” she scolded, one hand on her hip, full of command.

I was baffled. I am always careful with shared spaces, especially bathrooms. Such a thing hardly seemed possible.

“I didn’t leave it unflushed.”

“Then why wasn’t it flushed? Go see for yourself!”

I followed her to the bathroom. She pointed triumphantly at the toilet, her face sharp: “See? Isn’t this you, not flushing?”

The water was yellow, with a thick wad of paper floating on top. For a moment I wondered if I had truly forgotten—but that excessive paper made me certain it wasn’t me. It looked more like her son’s habit.

“I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t me.” I pressed the flush, turned, and walked back to my room, convinced she was picking a fight.

But behind me she snapped in irritation: “If it wasn’t you, then who else—me?!”

Already I had endured endless false accusations from them, guilty until proven innocent. That sentence broke my last thread of restraint. I shot back: “And when you left your own shit that wouldn’t flush, I cleaned it up silently four or five times.”

She was taken aback, but still refused to yield. “Well, you’re moving out soon anyway—”

“It wasn’t me!”

Her words made no sense. Did she mean that since I was leaving, they had license to torment me? That I should just swallow it all in silence?

I shut myself back in my room, seething.

At six o’clock, still no reply from the sub-landlord. I messaged the sister from the morning, asking what might be happening. She reassured me—he was probably just busy.

I knew I was tormenting myself with needless worry, but still I craved a definite answer.

At seven that evening, I went to a young adult gathering at the new church. Having spoken no real English for over a month, I could feel my fluency had waned. The gathering was on a roof, just a few people. I felt awkward, but also sensed I had stepped into a new circle.

I shared my wonder at how the martyrs, who faced lion dens and stakes, might look upon our comfort today. One brother asked if, as a Christian who had fled China, I thought European believers were too comfortable.

“If Europe’s ease and religious freedom ever made me cling to this world, then I would rather return to China,” I said. “There is no place of true comfort, only different battlegrounds at different stages of growth.”

A young woman there, a church staff member, mentioned that the chaplain’s wife—who is also the assistant chaplain—would soon travel to her home in rural France to prepare for a retreat, and needed a helper. But she hadn’t found any young person available.

I gladly volunteered. She gave me the contact information.

The evening air had shed the day’s heat, leaving only clarity and calm. The wind slipped through the jagged buildings, brushed across our faces, and drifted further on.

During closing prayer, I asked them to pray for my housing.

On the subway home, I messaged the assistant chaplain. At that moment, the sub-landlord finally replied—he had been driving all day.

After discussing the details, I paid the deposit. The matter of lodging was finally settled.
I breathed out, relieved.
Yet that night, I still could not sleep.
Since regaining the sense of self in February, I had not once been triggered into post-gathering overexcitement. But that night, the old, pickled taste of C-PTSD returned.

In the middle of the night, from the next room, the landlord’s son and his girlfriend’s chatter on the phone spilled through the walls again.

I got up and slammed the window shut.

The next morning, I woke at ten. The couple had gone to their bar, their son was out.
I went to the bathroom—again, the toilet was unflushed.

I hesitated, then decided not to clean up after them anymore. I returned to my room, fetched my phone, snapped a photo, and sent it to the landlady on WeChat: this was their mess.

No reply.

Only then did I remember—I was on my period. The tissue floating there bore no blood. When ambushed the day before, I hadn’t even thought of that.

The feeling of being forced into defense after the fact was maddening.

In the kitchen, I found grease by the stove, uncleaned. My anger flared. I photographed it too and sent it.

Along with the message: I am on my period; the unflushed tissue these two days had no blood, so it wasn’t me. I don’t use chili oil, so the stove stains aren’t mine. I haven’t touched the balcony, so don’t blame me for the door. I pay full rent, not to take the fall for others. From now on, if there’s a problem, I will take pictures at once. Let’s leave things cleanly and part in peace.

No reply. And I felt no satisfaction. Only that the whole exchange was warped.

I was trapped in the oppressive sense that unless I proved myself innocent first, guilt would be thrust upon me. This forced readiness for battle was all too familiar. And apart from escape, I had no solution.

Once I moved, I must learn to make boundaries not as emergency measures in combat, but as a natural attitude in daily life. So now, I had to begin holding others accountable for their actions, instead of silently absorbing it all.

Yet without realizing it, I had already become like a small, frightened animal.

I bristled at every stir in the environment, as if the door might be pounded at any moment, as if I must always brace for confrontation.

Whenever the landlords returned, I typed louder on my keyboard. Sometimes I even spoke to myself in my room, pretending to be on the phone—using noise to defend my borders. Like in the animal world, where the weak must cry out or rustle leaves to scare off intruders.

But in truth, I sat before my computer all day, unable to create. I read back through my old writings, trying to recognize in their cadence and structure a grasp of order. Yet in reality, I lacked the strength even to tidy my room, and any moment I might be sucked into the vortex of my phone, into scraps of messages and short videos.

When I reread The Fellowship, which I had just finished days ago, I wondered if the “openness” I wrote of was truly born of imitating Christ—or only a symptom of blurred boundaries from trauma.

It was the same piercing question as whether writing itself was God’s calling or just my own wishful illusion.

I sank into the night of faith, staring blankly at the articles I had written these past two months. In that small, dim, chaotic room, I fell silent with my words.

Yet following them forward, suddenly I glimpsed a light.

They were lamps I had carved from suffering itself, fires kindled from pain to illumine my way.

Writing became a ritual, through which I saw how I had laid down real anguish as foundation, and under God’s hand forged from it a resolute beauty of hope and strength.

Perhaps the answer was never simply “either/or.”

Perhaps it was precisely the “sensitivity” and raw experience of pain that allowed me to enter into Christ’s human struggle with such radical empathy.

Perhaps it was my blurred boundaries that God, through the Spirit, was transforming—no longer passive wounding, but an intentional openness, a movement from hurt to self-giving.

Perhaps this was why I must write.

The truer the calling, the deeper the doubt. The sharper the struggle, the more it proved its weight.

So this was what it meant to be “co-workers with God.”

The next day, June 21st, Saturday.

From morning I sat on the floor, typing, chewing over the past. By afternoon, when I wanted to go to the bathroom, I found I could not move.

Frozen on the floor, yet without any sense of grounding.

Beside me lay scattered notebooks. I thought—if only I set this one back in place, began with it, tidied the room, then everything would be alright.

It was the simplest task. I had the ability.

Just one reach of the hand, the first step—and I could regain command of my small space.

…But I could not move.

Helplessness swallowed me. The pickled heaviness pressed so hard I could scarcely breathe. Every sound in the environment stomped on me as though through plastic sheeting.

All I could do was pray.

After a while, I calmed. Told myself: I am safe. I will not die.

I knew—this too was a lesson set before me.

Having grown up where my boundaries were constantly broken, I had learned to protect myself with tension and combat. It became instinct. When that tension finally snapped, I survived by numbing through dissociation. Now that I had regained presence, I still flinched too easily.

The boundaries propped up by stress alone carried none of the Spirit’s gentle heartbeat.

I closed my eyes and breathed carefully. Felt my chest rising stronger. Prayed softly:
“Lord, I do not stand just to fight back, but because you have given me space to breathe, to live out who I am in you. I do not fight alone. Please take my hand.”

Then I clenched my palm, felt the warmth of my skin.

Life is such a miracle… I myself am.

After a long time, I raised my hand to my face.

When my fingers touched my face, being itself seemed to gain meaning.

I traced each feature. For the first time, I realised what a wonder it was to touch my own face—

Indeed, here was someone made in God’s image. She truly existed, and had grown into this fragile, stubborn form.

Then, like one starved, I began to reach for the notebook, for small objects around me, touching them slowly.

No longer to restore order or regain control, but to feel alive, real, connected to this present moment.

Ten minutes later, I stood in the bathroom, gazing calmly into the mirror at my worn reflection.

This was the one loved by God, precious in my Lord’s eyes.

“Who told you that you were naked?”