Having not seen a member of my family for over ten months, I will admit that I am a little (read: incredibly) excited to see my dad. Lately, I've been thinking about being away for so long and just the nature of loneliness in general. When I first got to Chiang Mai, I knew one person in the entire town, and I had met her exactly 4 weeks earlier. In the months to come, the amount of people I knew grew pretty slowly (read: not at all), and my days were spent either not getting hired for work or laying in bed wasting the day away inside. And like all things, eventually it got better, and I met more people, and I got a full time job, and now I'm pretty much too busy living my life to be lonely. But looking back, it's interesting to me to think how lonely I was. And I look at it now, because at the time, its one of those things that you can't really think about. In the back of my mind, I had a little voice telling me how miserable I was and how I should just go home. But then you have to think about what is coming and have faith/confidence/trust that its going to get better. You have to be able to banish those thoughts and take pleasure where you can find it (ie, pleasure from that fact that I was living in friggen Thailand.) If you don't, if you listen to that voice, then you are miserable. Or you go home. Or (like I did once) you break down while talking to your dad on Skype and just cant stop crying. And all the time people are asking you how you are, and isn't Thailand amazing...and you lie to them, and tell them you are fine, and its great and beautiful...and eventually, like with me, things get better (just like you knew they would), and it starts to be true when you tell people that. And you get less lonely, whether because of friends or work or whatever. But it never really goes away, just changes. Or maybe a better way to say it would be that you learn to deal with it.
But the interesting thing (and the reason I told you all that stuff above was that I wanted to talk about this) is that the closer I get to having my dad come, the more and more I realize how much I miss my family. Like, I'm past it, and I'm not miserable anymore (and I'm not lying about it either now), but the careful covering I had built over that emotion (just not letting myself feel lonely or miss them) is like coming apart like nobody's business. And I realize that I have a huuuuuuge hole inside me without my family and friends. It's been covered, I haven't been upset for a while, I'm fine, I love my job, I have some great friends, I live in Thailand, I haven't closed my windows in like 8 months...I'm great. I have so many other things that I would never have had if I didn't come. I mean, all those other things were pretty much the reason I came to Thailand. But no matter how many other things you have, they can't replace what you are missing. And you can adapt and become used to something, but its pretty hard to make it go away entirely. And that having a person come visit makes it all come out in the open again. But hey, its OK, because my dad is coming to fill that hole! I know this is kinda random, but the last few weeks, as my dad's visit gets closer and closer, I'll have pangs of loneliness/homesickness/missingpeopleness that are almost physical. And I just find it fascinating how good humans are burying something 99.9% of the time that can be such a powerful feeling. And also how having someone come who is going to help with that feeling a great deal is making me realize its even there!
Anyways, sorry for the tangent, I might have been better off telling you about the 545 tests I graded this week. Also sorry for the lack of posts recently. Living in Thailand is exotic, and adventurous, and blah blah blah. I mean, it is, but bottom line, I'm an adult, I have a real job and I'm at the office 40 hours a week, so there isn't much time left over for the tropical paradise I currently call home. Like anything in life, from school to work to prison, it quickly becomes routine and you want to read about my daily routine as much as I want to type about it. (Not at all). With my dad coming and us heading to China (wooooooooo) along with our adventures in Chiang Mai, I should have some more stories coming up soon. And I do have things to relate that I am going to try and get on here in the next week, mostly because I want them on here before I forget them. Hope everyone is doing well back home, and I will see you all in exactly 3 months!
TPWWLT - B.O.B. - 'Magic'
PS - I just want to say again I'm not looking for any retroactive sympathy. I knew that was going to happen, I thought about it before I came to prepare for it, I knew what was going on while it was happening, and I knew it would get better. It's just tough sometimes to get your brain to control your emotions, or your head to overcome your heart. And thats why I brought it up, because I have been fascinated by that dynamic lately, especially as it pertains to loneliness.
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