‘Are those for me?’ I thought, looking down at the handcuffs bolted to the wall beside me, they created a series of unwelcome fantasies in my mind. 

It was an interesting way to spend my 23rd birthday. Stuck in a police station as officers ran around casually gathering paperwork to kick me off the island and issue me with a one year ban from the Republic of China. 

I deserved it. I had now overstayed my original visa-free status by seven months. It wasn’t a planned disregard for the law, I had just fallen into it. 

The special immigration police station had a surprisingly relaxed atmosphere. It was located in the basement of a large building that looked more like a large train station than a distributor of justice to illegal aliens. 

They were just people doing their nine-to-five jobs and had no interest in making the process any more miserable for me than it already was and it was miserable. 

The thought of the ban more than the process or ban itself is what made it so miserable. Being banned from a place for an entire year and carrying that announcement in my passport to every immigration counter I passed through. I hated that thought. 

Others had it worse. A monitor on the wall showed the activity in the cells that my fellow illegal immigrants were stuck in. They looked Filipino and Indonesian, some laid on the floor, others sat on a bench, all looked harmless house and kitchen workers. I wondered how much worse their crimes were, or if maybe it was my citizenship that allowed me to be on this side while they were locked up on the other. 

This side was pretty easy, just some forms, a big red stamp in my passport and I could leave freely to have a birthday dinner in a nice restaurant while those on the other side remained locked in cages awaiting a more forced deportation. 

After an hour of waiting, I signed the last forms, got the big red “C” stamp in my passport and left the police station for my birthday meal at one of my favourite restaurants – Tasty, feeling like a very relieved and content criminal. 

It was the beginning of the end of a long saga. I had been asking myself the same questions for months. 

‘Will I be stuck on this island forever?’ 

‘Will this ruin my chances of getting into the next country?’ 

‘How did this creep up on me?’ 

How had this crept up on me? 

_ 

We were in bed, just about to sleep when she asked me the question out of nowhere, “Am I your girlfriend now?” 

I sat up in bed surprised by the question. I thought we already were in a relationship and confirming it had never seemed necessary to me. 

“Yes,” I said, “I was already telling people you were my girlfriend.” I reassured her. 

I had a sudden burst of energy from having the official couple talk and went out to 7-Eleven to get some late night snacks for us. What a great boyfriend I already was. 

A great boyfriend but still a man. 

The three billion plus women in the world who weren’t my girlfriend decided to send two representatives to test my resolve rather quickly. 

They sat on the stairs going up to the second level, I walked the store trying not to notice them whispering to each other as they looked my way. 

“Hey, hello!…” they started calling out to me. 

‘Ah, fuck!’ I thought. 

They were drunk, I wasn’t. Both of them were pretty. I moved the conversation along as fast as I could and told them I needed to get the snacks back to my girlfriend. 

Just as I was being a good boyfriend, the doors of the 7-Eleven slid open and Natalie entered the scene in her pyjamas, “What are you doing?” she asked, looking upset. 

“Talking.” I said. I was talking. 

“Sorry we got you in trouble.” the two girls shouted as they split off away from the main street as I headed home. 

I didn’t want our relationship to begin and end in the space of one trip to 7-Eleven but as I came through the door she was already prepared, handing over the notes for her snacks without looking at me. 

Smooth talk, smooth talk was needed. 

Smooth talk saved me that night. 

Over the next several months we developed a routine that I was happy with. I would stay at home thinking, writing, reading and walking about the court while Natalie would go to class. We would meet during her breaks and get a meal in one of the main streets restaurants or get some bubble tea and go for a walk around the NCCU campus. 

At night we would go into the centre of the city and make the most of Taipei and on the weekends go back to Natalie’s family’s house in Hsinchu where her family would spoil me with home cooked Taiwanese feasts and trips to Hsinchu’s tastiest restaurants. 

I got used to being in a relationship and I was in love! 

But. 

It was not an easy love. 

I would often look at her and not know what she was thinking. It was like her mind was enclosed behind a layer of thick steel. The emotions would come out frequently but often not match what I expected. 

I had never lived with a girl before, for my first serious relationship to be with a girl like this one could only be a positive thing I told myself. 

If the relationship didn’t work out, no amount of nagging or explosive arguments from a girl in the future could penetrate me easily. The defenses would be solidly built against it. 

There were plenty of beautiful girls, beautiful girls I could have been spending my time on. It was such a rare thing to find one that kept me interested. I’m not sure that without the extremes of her personality I would have stayed. I could have done what I’d always done up to that point, keep moving on. 

In love and living a joyful life in Taiwan, I casually blew past my three month visa-free status. And I hadn’t bothered to extend it. 

I was now staying in Taiwan illegally. 

I told Natalie that I’d extended the status and we continued on with our lives in Taipei as usual. 

The months went by and I avoided the problem of the overstay. 

What was I doing? On this island. 

Sometimes I felt like I had stepped off the world. A cigarette and a coffee and a loving fuck in the middle of a great heist. This is what Taiwan had become. 

As May came to an end I only had days before my overstay would start getting serious. Over 90 days the punishment increased from a small fine to a small fine and a one year ban on entering the country. 

As each day passed the pressure increased all while Natalie knew nothing about it. 

When I finally did sit down on the sofa and start searching for the ticket, I knew it would be Singapore. I booked the ticket and with it a guaranteed argument. 

I had some time, a few days before I would fly to figure out my strategy for it. I would have to tell her everything. How exactly was a work in progress. 

“You know I told you I extended my visa-free status? Well actually I didn’t and I have a few days to leave before I’m banned for a year.” 

Not a fun conversation to start the day with. 

So I put it off for as long as I could. It wasn’t until the morning of my flight that I finally told her the truth. 

She was combing her hair in the wardrobe mirror as I got out of bed. I put my head in my hands, lifted myself from the bed and braced for impact. 

“I think we should break up.” I shot the words out as casually as telling someone their shoes were untied. 

“Ok!” she said in faux excitement, still fixing her hair in the mirror. 

She left the room, I held my breath. 

“This is bullshit!” she came flying back through the door in tears. 

Given our arguments and that she would regularly tell me during them she wanted to break up, I hadn’t expected the reaction. 

I thought her OK reaction was more in line with how things would go, but now here she was crying and devastated. 

I kept up the act while we went to a Western Union to collect my last wad of cash I needed for Singapore. My debit card had expired months earlier and trips to Western Union locations throughout Taipei were a common day trip for us. 

In the taxi, sitting next to this girl I loved – who was still sitting next to me despite the heartbreak – my armour began to crack. 

Back at the basketball court the armour cracked completely. I couldn’t break up with her, I didn’t want to. 

I explained everything about my visa situation and why I had to leave. 

Tears, hugs, screams, kisses. 

We agreed that we would stay together and figure it out even if it meant doing it long distance. An hour later and both feeling a lot better, we took a bus to the airport. 

She fell asleep in the window seat holding my hand. The sun set and the bus darkened, I stared ahead at the red digital clock above the driver’s seat. My mind at peace. 

As the doors of the departures hall slid open I decided against taking the flight. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” Natalie asked me, “You still have time.” 

I’d face the consequences later, I wasn’t giving up my life in Taiwan because of a silly thing like an immigration law. 

We ate some 7-Eleven food and got on the next bus back to Taipei. 

. 

Liverpool wouldn’t be winning the Premiership that season, finishing a disappointing second to Chelsea after a blistering campaign, the clubs best in a long time. The World Cup came and went, summer turned to fall and the typhoons started to roll in. 

Since the early summer aborted self-deportation we had been making plans for the future. We developed a rough plan to meet back up in Vancouver in early 2015. I would continue my travels until then and Natalie would finish her Chinese teaching job. 

One question was still unanswered, when would I leave? 

I would avoid thinking about the question too much but I couldn’t escape it. The pressure began manifesting itself in other forms, mostly my strange mix of mental disorders. My obsessive compulsive disorder with a touch of what some I’m sure would think of as schizophrenia went into overdrive. 

I would cross over the doorway defeating a useless obsessive thought just to have my mind invaded by another. I would close the door and enter the room again. After the fifth or sixth or tenth try I would finally defeat it. 

“No more OCD!” Natalie would scream in frustration as the rituals took place. 

I’ve had OCD from a young age, as a child I would repeat the same things over and over in my mind before I would sleep. 

The strange condition would show itself in different ways throughout my childhood and adolescence, it would be calm for months and then pick up when a new, always stupid obsessive thought entered my head. 

Switching lights on and off, entering a room a certain way or number of times and saying something aloud again and again and again to counter the intrusive and obsessive thoughts. 

I had a lot of obsessive compulsions. 

It was always there but the last few months of worrying over my visa status in Taiwan had made it impossible to go five minutes without some type of obsessive battle. 

I knew it was time to leave. I had to go to the police and get deported.