Welcome to Thailand

In lieu of my first official day as a teacher in Thailand, I thought I would finally post this entry from a few weeks back. The first bout of loneliness was something I dreaded, but it was also something I knew was inevitable, and it's a hurtle I'm happy to have already put behind me. I have since moved into my own house, and I am starting to develop my own routine for house chores, self-care, and work. For all of us adjusting to life here in Thailand, I hope the adjustment is relatively smooth, and I hope happiness finds us over and over again. >>>

I am four months into my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, and I am lying awake at 3AM in a Bangkok hostel when the tears finally come. They come after the frustration, the misguided anger, the indignance directed towards my Thai counterpart, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers, my host mom...

I am homesick.

I have adjusted to the heat. The Thai summer's lazy pulling sweat from my pores - like plucking mangos from the branches of the trees, long pole capped with net, reaching towards the branches like we are fishing in the sky. I have adjusted to the spice, dancing on the palate, its unobliging kick stiletto-pricking the tongue. I can eat noodles piping hot from the pot in 105 degree heat. I have learned to communicate well enough to make friends - good friends - despite not speaking the same language. Not really. For months I have spoken enough Thai to talk about the weather. Dinner. Give the Thai people jigsaw pieces of myself, ask them to piece me together, both of us unsure of what crucial pieces of each other we do not know we are missing.

It isn't the mountains I miss. I have mountains, rising - palm and jasmine-scented - yawning over the horizon.

The missing isn't being unable to drive my car to the supermarket instead of biking six miles for a chocolate milk, carrying produce in my backpack, cooking on a single gas burner in my back yard. I don't miss pizza or macaroni and cheese. I don't miss the stove. I miss the stove a little bit. I miss my bathtub and soaking in candlelight. I miss poetry slams. I miss milkshakes at Rico's. I miss my dog, though she died before I moved here. It isn't my bed, but I do miss my bed. It isn't the wine or the beer, I can find both in Bangkok. The missing isn't even the pancakes.

The missing is in the loneliness. The loneliness comes in a wave of realization - my face buried in an unfamiliar pillow - it has been four months since I have been hugged by someone who really loves me... more than that, by someone who really knows me. Who knows why I spend every October in an emotional blender of depression and grief, who stood beside me as we mourned my mother's passing.

I have not had a face-to-face conversation with someone who I know - through years of friendship and support and laughter - genuinely cares about me since I came to Thailand. I know that doesn't mean people here don't care.

I have spent the last hour mentally preparing an explanation of this loneliness in a language I am only beginning to speak, so I don't say something that might offend. I have learned the weight of words. They can be heavy as the grief I have carried for seven years - it has never gotten lighter. They can be light as the airy dismissal I gave my coteacher when she asked to lesson plan, but I was already in Bangkok. Tonight, my heart is heavy.

I am aching for the sound of my father's garage door rising, the clack of his dress shoes against the hardwood floor. I want to hear him call me "Lovie," fall asleep to the sound of him snoring in the other room - that distant memory a comic lullaby, the hymn of his breathing a gentle assurance I am not alone.

I miss the whooping call of my best friend as she stomps through my front door. These are sounds I have not heard in nearly half a year.

Yet this kind of lonely is familiar. When I said goodbye to my mother - her face a sunken mask, skin icy to the touch - I reached into her casket to adjust her collar, for the mere assurance that I could remember her as she had been one last time. My fingers have fumbled to make familiar this aching absence before. But how do I explain this to my village?

Chán kit-tung krccp-krua yuut yuut. Chán kit-tung mee kccng chán. Dtccn-tii chán yuu gap tuuk assassamak, chán luum giao-gaap tuuk-yaang - tuuk kon - mai yuu nii naka.

I want to be here. Dear, god, how I love these people. How I love this country, my community, how I find purpose here. My heart is still in pieces. I've left something behind in Colorado I suspect will remain there as long as I am away. But I want to be here, in Thailand, half a world away from the people who know what keeps me up at night and how to put it to bed. I miss the people I call home. Everyday.

Everyday.

Tonight, I am lonely. I'm not sure if that will ever go away.

But I am still here. I am still standing. And I know that I can make it through another day.

#travel #travelwriting #peacecorps