What Do You Feel About That by Viveka Li, brown sugar boba with ice

 

I pushed open a slightly heavy, white-painted wooden door. My therapist, Karin, was sitting behind her light-wood desk, waiting for me.

It’s hard to find a Chinese-speaking therapist in Helsingborg. Luckily, many of them offer sessions in English. That gives me, someone who doesn't speak Swedish, a small pocket of air to breathe in this country I’ve lived in for three years and still find unfamiliar.

"Hey, Qing! How are you doing today?" Karin asked.

She looks about fifty, with platinum-blond curls and striking blue eyes. She fits the picture many people have of what a therapist should look like—calm, soft-eyed, firm. Sometimes, she reminds me of the kind of mother I used to imagine having as a child.

Of course, I’d still rather my own mother just be herself, not a perfect one.

“Umm, just as usual.” I pulled out the chair and sat down across from her. I tried to stretch out my limbs a little, leaned back, and took a deep breath. This had become a small ritual—something we did at the start of every session to help me settle in.

"How is your week?" she asked again, unfazed by my non-answer, as cheerful as ever. “What did you do this week? Is everything going well with your PhD applications?”

Honestly, since our sessions are scheduled for Friday afternoons, it often feels like I’m here to deliver a weekly report.

“Well... I emailed ten professors on Monday, and I’ve already received three rejections. One professor from the University of Melbourne seemed interested in my proposal—we’ve scheduled a meeting for next Tuesday. I’m trying to find supervisors whose research aligns with mine, all over the world—England, Austria, the U.S., the Netherlands…” I tried to piece the week together as I spoke. Honestly, it hadn’t been an exciting one.

"Oh, so you're planning to leave Sweden?" She sounded a little surprised.

I understood why. Just a few weeks ago, I was telling her how much I loved my quiet life here, surrounded by forests. No more chasing cities, no more hiking trips or picnic plans. I only needed to open the door—nature was already in my backyard.

One night it snowed through the evening, and the next morning, when I opened the door, the entire courtyard was full of animal footprints. It looked like they had thrown a party while I slept. I felt like I was part of nature, not separate from it. I no longer needed to search for it. I just opened the door.

“No... I don’t want to leave. But I don’t have a choice.” I lay back in the chair again and stared at the plain white ceiling. “It’s not possible for me to get a PhD position in Sweden. It’s just... not possible.”

I didn’t even know where to start explaining this kind of impossibility. Maybe I’d have to go all the way back to the fact that I was born in China.

“Okay.” She didn’t press. I figured even as a white woman, she'd probably heard enough stories about how hard it is for Asians to get jobs in academia.

And this wasn’t even about discrimination—not exactly. Swedish is the official language, and not speaking it does make things harder. But even if I were willing to learn it, how many years would it take—just to get good enough to do research and write academically? Especially for someone like me, who’s terrible with languages. It already took me my whole life just to speak English properly.

“You said you really like your current life.” Karin said, her voice even and deliberate. “Although it comes with pressure and uncertainty. But it sounds like you might have to leave it behind. So, what do you feel about that?”

Here it comes, I thought.

What do I feel about that? This question has been asked in this pure white room more times than I can count, and I never seem to have an answer. We all know what feelings are. But what about “not feeling”? I don’t think anyone ever taught us what that’s supposed to be.

I asked myself.

Am I angry? No. I knew it was nothing personal. I just couldn’t fit into their departments—whether it’s about research topics or language. And I had already accepted that. It’s just a fact. So I didn’t see any reason to be angry.

Am I happy? Haha, obviously not.

Am I anxious? Again, it’s a fact. Whether I’m anxious or not doesn’t change the outcome.

So what is it, then? What exactly do I feel about all this?

The silence in the room swelled like a balloon. As always, Karin was the one who gently popped it. “You’re trying to justify your emotions again, Qing,” she said. There was something sharp in her gentle gaze.

I wasn’t afraid it would hurt. I was afraid it wouldn’t be sharp enough. Not sharp enough to cut through me, not enough to make me “feel”.

“I don’t know, Karin. It sounds like you think I had some feelings, but my rational mind judged them as wrong, so I pushed them down. And yes, I do tend to judge them—but I don’t think they were even there to begin with. I’m just trying to figure out why they never showed up.”

“That’s okay. We can take it slowly.”

Karin fell silent for a moment, which surprised me. Usually, she’s the one who keeps things moving. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell my silence made her a little uneasy. She knows I’m stable. I’m not the kind of person who explodes in silence. If anything, I just burn—quietly, slowly, in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone. I guess what she’s really afraid of is my thinking.

My rationality and emotions aren’t two separate systems. They’ve long been tangled together, like a ball of yarn a cat’s played with. And the only way to untangle it is to cut it into pieces. She doesn’t want me to be in pieces. But she doesn’t want me to be a yarn ball, either.

“If you feel like you can’t define what you feel,” Karin said carefully, “then maybe we don’t have to define it. Emotions are just something humans made up, after all. What if we didn’t define them, but just described them?”

“What’s the difference?” I tilted my head. “Isn’t describing your feelings the same as naming them?”

“It is, usually. But not today. Let’s try something different. Let’s describe a scene. It could be something real or something imagined. Just tell me what kind of scene comes to mind when you think about having to leave this life you’ve grown to like.”

Am I really going to leave Sweden? Even after I’ve made some progress? No. I know this isn’t just about academic ability. The system behind it is complicated—way bigger than anything I can hold together, definitely bigger than anything I can fix.

But now, at this moment, I have to face it. I might have to leave my forest. And maybe my forest will no longer have me.

I lay back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling.

 

*

A drop of water landed on my face, falling from the ceiling. I wiped it off. Was it raining?

The rain got heavier, and within seconds, I was soaked. Water took over the entire room.

The desk, the chairs, Karin’s notebook, her pen and laptop—all floated. Even some of the books from her shelf were drifting on the surface.

Suddenly, I couldn’t feel the weight of my body anymore. I tipped backward and sank into the water.

I closed my eyes in the water. The whole world went quiet, except for the distant sound of thunder, slowly approaching.

The wooden chair turned into a small boat. It lifted me back to the surface.

I could breathe again.

When I opened my eyes, the white ceiling and walls had collapsed.

Above us, dark clouds pressed down. Around us, an endless sea.

I was lying on the deck, rising and falling with the waves.

Karin was sitting on the other end of the boat.

The violent rain didn’t touch her. She looked as neat and dry as always.

With a calm, knowing expression, she looked at me and asked, “So, where are we going?”

Let’s go into the center of the storm.

But, to my surprise, the boat didn’t move toward it. It was caught in a current, circling around the storm’s center again and again.

The thunder echoed in my ears, now near, now far.

I could hear it. I could see the lightning flashing in the clouds. But I could never quite reach it.

I had no oars. I hadn’t thought that the moving of the boat would depend not only on the pull of the storm, but also on the currents below, dragging me whichever way they wanted.

I thought the storm would carry me there. I had prepared for a battle with the storm. But it didn’t take me there. It didn’t take me anywhere.

We just kept turning circles in the same patch of sea. The weapons I’d made, the resilience I’d built, none of it was any use.

I just lay there on the deck, listening to the thunder, soaking wet.

“So,” Karin asked again, “where are we going?”

“I want to go into the center of the storm.” I looked up at the clouds. Then past the clouds, at the sky behind them.

“Why?”

“I have a battle to fight there. I prepared all for it. I sharpened my soul so it could stand through the storm’s torment without collapsing.

I sharpened a blade so it could cut through the violent and directionless winds.

I believe I have the most stubborn eyes in the world, and I want to use them to stare into the heart of the storm, and see what’s there—

even if it’s nothing at all.”

“But you don’t have oars,” Karin said, calmly.

“No, I don’t,” I admitted. “I’m tripping here.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why you need to go there,” she said, looking out at the sea I was trying to reach. “You know there is just a war waiting for you, or there is nothing at all.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t really have a reason to go. The only reason is that I want to. Even if it’s war. Even if it’s nothing. I want to see it with my own eyes.”

“Then tell me, what is it that you’re really trying to find? Why are we here, in this sea?” she said, her eyes back on me, her voice soft, but her words sharp. “The treasure hidden in the storm, granted only to the hero who survives the battle, is it your path to stay in Sweden, or is it just what you feel about all this?”

I let out a sigh.

“They’re the same thing,” I said. “This sea is how I feel. The storm carries my emotions, my wants— all the things I can’t put into words, that don’t fit into how humans define emotion.”

“So, what are you going to do now?” Karin asked.

“You don’t have to worry,” I said.

I rolled over lazily and lay flat on the deck, face down.

My forehead rested against the cold, wet wood.

Using it as a pivot, I pushed myself up—slowly, awkwardly—in a position that tested the limits of my flexibility, and probably shouldn’t have worked.

“What are you thinking?” Karin asked, watching me with curiosity.

“I’m thinking…” I started laughing. “If there’s no place for me here, then I guess I’ll just—”

And at the word “just,” I opened my arms wide and fell backward into the sea.

I closed my eyes.

Air slowly left my lungs.

The water wrapped around me—and surprisingly, it wasn’t cold.

I sank deeper and deeper.

The thunder grew distant. Then disappeared completely.

The water withdrew like a tide.

And I dropped, back into the chair in the pure white room.

 

*

I pulled a tissue from the box on Karin’s desk and wiped the salty water off my face.

“You’ve done really well,” Karin said. I wasn’t sure why, but even though I was the one who jumped into the sea, she looked like she’d just walked through a storm.

“I know you’ve done everything you could,” she continued. “But you don’t have to push yourself. You still have six months before your permit expires. Maybe a lot will change in six months. Maybe you didn’t reach the storm this time because it’s not time yet.”

What a naive, kind woman, I thought, smiling at her.

“Well, then I guess the only thing I need to do for the next six months,” I said, “is max out my dating apps, find someone, and apply for a partner visa.”

Karin hesitated. I knew what she wanted to say. She could’ve just said it.

And she did.

“Actually,” she said, “you know, a lot of people do that—not just women, men too. There’s no shame in it.”

“Of course. I completely agree. If all I wanted was to live in Sweden, there would be nothing wrong with finding a partner. But that’s not the point. The point is, even if I could stay on a partner visa, I’d still be right here, in the same place. Nothing would change. I want to keep doing my academic work. And there’s no place for that, for me, here.”

“I understand,” Karin said softly. “But I don’t want you to think of this as something you have to carry entirely on your own. You can ask for help—maybe from your current advisor, maybe from someone you haven’t even met yet.”

“I know no one can cross that sea for you. But if you reached out your hand, is it possible someone might pass you an oar? And even if not, I hope you don’t forget. I’m on that boat with you.”

“All right,” I said quietly, too.

In the next six months, maybe longer, I know I’ll return to that sea, over and over again.

When I lie in bed at night, the water will rise up through the mattress and wrap around my body.

When I listen to K-pop with my headphones on, the sea will spill out of the sound and flood my ears.

When I open my laptop to revise my research proposal, it will pour through the screen and hit me in the face.

But I’m not afraid. No, I don’t have that kind of emotion.

I know I’ll return there, calmly, every time.

If I’m stuck, I’ll jump in again and again.

And if I ever happen to have an oar, I won’t hesitate to face the storm, whatever the storm turns out to be.

What do you feel about that?

About the author

Viveka Li is a queer Chinese woman and immigrant currently pursuing a PhD in Literature. Her writing explores themes of identity, cultural dislocation, and the inner lives of those on the margins. Her work seeks to give voice to those who burn quietly. 

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