this one's personal

i feel very different in Thailand. i look different, i think different, it’s all very different. i’ve lost a lot of weight, it feels, and my hands have more pronounced veins and bones. i have a yellow bruise inside of my knee from a scooter crash, and i wear no makeup, nor do i have a blow dryer for my hair. my feet are crossed with sandal lines that i have never seen before, and i have a new pair of black spectacles obscuring my eyes, which seem a little bit darker to me than when i landed in Bangkok a month ago.
it feels, in chiang mai, that the frivolous daily activities from the states have no place, and here you’re either doing something constructive and interactive or you’re doing literally nothing, maybe napping or reading or writing or having an iced coffee in a café on the street. there isn’t the rush rush to do do that westerners are plagued with. this psychotic compulsion to be active. i have napped more, walked more, taken more cups of tea in this side of the world than i ever have, i think. my usual impatience is lessened, my insistence for my way is depleted. i think this comes with spending time with other westies who are calmer, but mostly the thai culture is not made to support inflated ego and western bitches.
i worry about what will happen when i go home. my mother emailed me to say she is excited to see how i am when i get back, that my writings seem a little different to her than before. i have stepped into more of who i want to be than i was before, and i have a small fear it will slip away, unnoticed, in the fervor of unimportant American activity.
i still feel very cynical, to be sure. i feel pronounced in my likes and dislikes here in Thailand. i like the heat. i like stepping down the block to have breakfast with new friends. i like that my phone doesn’t ring all the time, and i have plenty of time to write. i dislike being had for being white. i dislike bargaining with merchants and tuk-tuk drivers, i dislike loud French guys on the phone outside of my window at 2 in the morning. i dislike, on judgment, most of the plain American girls and their grad school boyfriends with packs the size of a Honda civic, or the shirtless scandanavian tourists and their tattoos, and i especially dislike the middle aged farang men with teenage asian girls. and i’d give a toe to have my blue jeans here instead of in my suitcase in Bangkok.
i think the process of becoming entirely ready has more to do with erosion than new growth. eroding away all of the frivolous to expose what truly needs removing, and then praying for that removal. in training last summer, toward the end of the week, my boss would nitpick about little things in presentation, simply because the bigger things had been removed. this has been really good for me to see what is left that i am not good with anymore. ego, not being gentle with people i meet, being American and brazen, not treading lightly. the more of the bad we remove, the less need there is to force good through.
i could live here quite happily, i imagine.