This time around, it's both easier and more difficult to live in Bangkok. Although my internet all too often moves at a rate that a glacier could easily outpace, I eventually can send an email that will reach its destination, can check my family's facebook pages and blogs, see news from the U.S. on my laptop, send photos downloaded from the digital camera that my sister gave me for Christmas, all things that were barely functional or not yet dreamed of when I lived here seven years ago.
And yet these are privileges that can catch me off guard and plunge me into a state of sadness in a millisecond--a violent yearning to see my sons in the same casual, spur-of-the moment "let's have dinner" fashion that we have done so easily for the past few years.
I'm lucky that Matt and Nick were both in the same city as I was until recently--I'm lucky that they're men I deeply like as well as love--I'm lucky--and I tell myself that when I'm engulfed in a bout of homesickness that comes as stealthily and inexorably as vertigo.
I remind myself that this is normal, and that it will never stop taking over on a semi-regular basis. I tell myself that I knew this would happen and to suck it up. I go out into the world and buy toothpaste and Kleenex and food and two Sunday papers. I take pictures to send them and plan to buy and send them the tee shirts that I saw yesterday with the logo for Red Bull that said Dead Bull instead. And I wait, for emails from them, for a good story written on one of their web sites, for this feeling to go back into its corner and wait to pounce out at me with no warning on some other day.
And yet these are privileges that can catch me off guard and plunge me into a state of sadness in a millisecond--a violent yearning to see my sons in the same casual, spur-of-the moment "let's have dinner" fashion that we have done so easily for the past few years.
I'm lucky that Matt and Nick were both in the same city as I was until recently--I'm lucky that they're men I deeply like as well as love--I'm lucky--and I tell myself that when I'm engulfed in a bout of homesickness that comes as stealthily and inexorably as vertigo.
I remind myself that this is normal, and that it will never stop taking over on a semi-regular basis. I tell myself that I knew this would happen and to suck it up. I go out into the world and buy toothpaste and Kleenex and food and two Sunday papers. I take pictures to send them and plan to buy and send them the tee shirts that I saw yesterday with the logo for Red Bull that said Dead Bull instead. And I wait, for emails from them, for a good story written on one of their web sites, for this feeling to go back into its corner and wait to pounce out at me with no warning on some other day.
5 comments:
'And yet these are privileges that can catch me off guard and plunge me into a state of sadness in a millisecond--a violent yearning to see my sons in the same casual, spur-of-the moment "let's have dinner" fashion that we have done so easily for the past few years.'
That can be a crippling form of sadness. I'm increasingly familiar with it.
It's difficult to write involved emails from work... anything other than my mindless MySpace blogs requires a degree of concentration that I can't maintain with the phones ringing throughout the day.
Once I'm able to email from home, my correspondence should improve. Bruce and the guys all say hi.
I plan on emailing today. We both got kind of quiet - we can't do that because we are too much alike and the quiet gets too quiet.
I love you.
Oh, and Matt? Love you too.
I can't wait for you to have domestic internet access! Love to you and hi to Bruce and the guys...tell them we need to fix the mess on the Thai-Cambodian border so people like me can vist Preah Vihear again!
I miss you, Alison--will email soon.
I missed the picture when I first read this post. It's amazing. I love the pictures that you are sharing.
Alison
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