Saddest Man In The World
One
morning, I was looking down at the pavement while walking back to my campus
apartment after lecturing when I heard, "And
here comes the saddest man in the
world." I looked up to find a new colleague walking in the opposite
direction, most likely to her lecture. She knew that I was Christian but nothing
else personal beyond that, as after the dinner held to welcome
the new faculty on campus, we had only exchanged brief
greetings while passing each other on campus. She
certainly knew nothing about Kristin and was just teasing me with an observation as a
greeting, not trying to insult me, so I smiled and said hello as
we passed each other.
If I had looked sad just that morning, she would have asked me if I was okay, not called me the saddest man in the world. I surmised that for her to call me the saddest man in the world, I must have consistently looked sad, which isn't good since Christians should exude the joy of salvation through Christ, not sadness.
The money that I was earning in China continued to cover Kristin's tuition, room, board and other expenses. Soon after receiving another bank transfer, she told me to stop contacting her for a while as she needs to focus on her studies. Thinking that she must be in a busy period, I didn't contact her for a week, and then emailed her to see how she is doing. After not answering my emails and calls for the next few days, she finally replied to my email and said that she had dropped out of the Baptist college, had found a job teaching at a kindergarten in another city in China, and is on her way to another city from which to fly there. She said our relationship is over, and told me to never contact her again.
If my status of being the saddest man in the world was disputable before I received her email, it may have been somewhat less so thereafter. But I set aside my feelings as I had a fire to put out: she had to be stopped from returning to China. I wrote her that while our relationship being over is acceptable, she must NOT return to China's toxic air pollution. We had tried for four years to find a place not only in China but also elsewhere in Asia where her body can tolerate the air pollution, but had failed. Four thousand people in China were dying daily from its air pollution and she could have been one of them had she stayed in China, so flying back to China was sheer insanity. So she needed to stop and cancel her flight. If she wanted to teach at a kindergarten or get any other job, she could do that in USA or anywhere else in the world that her body can tolerate.
She didn't listen, ignored my countless emails, flew to somewhere in China, and continued to ignore my emails pleading with her to leave China's toxic air. I spent the rest of that semester living up to the label of being the saddest man in the world, less for her betrayal and more because I knew that it's only a matter of time before her body breaks down again.
No longer needing to support Kristin, I left for southeast Asia after my eighth and final semester in China.