Japan

This morning, everything changed.

I have a confession to make. When I came to Japan in August 2009, I didn't come for Japan. I was running away and I was running towards: away from a life that was boring me, and towards a boy I loved more than I thought I could love. It wasn't about Japan at all, and it never was. It could have been anywhere: if The Boy had been in Korea, I'd have gone there. If he'd lived in Poland, I'd have gone there. In a hut in Mongolia? I'd have followed him. I didn't care, as long as I was away from England and with him. Away and towards.

My interest in Japan was not - as I said on my visa application - lifelong. It wasn't even six months long. I had never had any desire to see it, and no desire to find out anything about it. I didn't know one single word, and didn't even know where it was on a map. The process of falling in love with a half Japanese man changed that, slowly, but it only changed my interest in the culture of one person. The language he spoke, the food he ate, the heritage he had been born with. The customs he understood and the festivals he had taken part in. Japan became of interest to me simply as the country that had helped to produce the thing I loved best, and as the country I wanted to be a part of because I wanted to be a part of him.

When I arrived in Japan, that didn't change. I loved it, obviously, but I loved it as a beautiful backdrop to love. It wasn't Mount Fuji at sunrise: it was Mount Fuji at sunrise behind the boy I adored. It wasn't Tokyo Tower: it was Tokyo Tower on one side and the boy I loved on the other. It wasn't a shrine: it was a quiet place where we could hold hands. It wasn't a blue sky: it was a blue sky that meant we could lie on the beach and kiss. It wasn't Christmas day in a foreign city: it was Christmas day in a foreign city with the most beautiful boy in the world. Japan was all tied up with him. I loved it because I loved him, and the two were part of each other.

On the day it fell apart - on the day he went to bed with somebody else - Japan remained a backdrop, but it became a backdrop to confusion. Unsure why he changed so suddenly, unsure why he couldn't look me in the eyes, unsure why he kept crying for no reason, the backdrop receded even further. It wasn't a boat party in Tokyo: it was water I stared at as I tried to ring him and got nothing but voicemail. It wasn't a beautiful sunset; it was the sunset where he told me he didn't know if we had a future, but not why. And - when he eventually told me what exactly he had done with our future, and how many times - Japan became simply another part of the picture that hurt. The Japanese onsens I would go to because the hot water made the hole in my chest ache less; the Japanese rain that made it okay to cry. The Japanese toilets I would hide in; the Japanese food I could no longer eat.

I didn't know. I was too close to it to see the truth: that Japan was The Boy. He wasn't Japanese to me: he was Japan. And when he broke my heart, the only thing I wanted to do was get the hell out. To run away from the country that was him, and had always been him. That had only started existing for me when he did. Because every single thing that was Japanese hurt me. The places we'd been, yes, but more than that: the country itself seemed to poke at me and prod at me so that every single step, no matter where it was, hurt all of the time. There was no refuge. And, just as I missed him and fell apart for him, so Japan cut away at me constantly. And when I went home to England in March, it was the first time I had been able to breathe for so long I wasn't quite sure how to anymore. Thin, ill, unhappy, heartbroken, devastated, I returned to the English soil I had left when I was so in love and happy, and I could barely stand up.

At the time, nobody understood why I wanted to go back to Japan. Even I wasn't sure; I accepted the new job in an almost drunk haze, and booked the plane tickets like a sleepwalker. And, frankly, I have no idea how I managed to do it. How I managed to get back on a plane - two stone lighter, ten years younger, still in millions of pieces - and fly back to the country that had destroyed me. To fight the demons again, when I had already lost so badly. Completely on my own.

And I still don't know how I found the courage to do it, but this morning I woke up and I suddenly knew why.

My heart has healed, at last, and Japan is finally mine. When I ride through rice fields and smell the orange trees, I am simply riding through rice fields and smelling the orange trees. When I sit and watch the ocean, I'm sitting and watching the ocean. When a small child lights up and screams my name, it's their face I see and my name I hear. When I go to an onsen, there is no pain to take away. I speak a language that is my language and not his, and hear songs that he understands but does not own. The mountains are mine. They are my white herons and it is my wood smoke. The insects outside are mine: the sunsets are mine. Japan is not him anymore: it is Japan, and it is mine. And - in the process of taking it away from him and separating them out - I have lost a man and fallen in love with his country instead.

The Boy is gone - from here, from me - and I am glad. But he will never be gone completely. Because in loving Japan - boy and country - I have become somebody better. I have shown incredible weakness and desperation, I have felt love for the first time in all of its power, but I have also found beauty and strength, bravery and independence, kindness and compassion. I have lost myself completely, and found more of myself in return. And I have been crushed and found the courage to start again. To run towards, instead of away. To become the person I didn't think I could be: somebody who finally likes herself.

Japan is no backdrop: it is a country that gives as much you have the strength to ask for. And in returning, I have fallen in love with it all over again.

And this time it's not going anywhere.