I can I know

Good things take time.

I left New York in September of 2022 with a roundtrip ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand. 30 days, I told myself, I can do 30 days.

2 weeks before I left, I had a full-on nervous breakdown in the back of my boss’s car late one night. What am I doing?? I can’t do this. I’m crazy.

I was terrified.  

We had just come off a 10-day work trip, and I, having just completed my very last scheduled shift for the foreseeable future, had no idea when or if I’d be back. I had that 30-day round-trip ticket home, but even I knew it was just a safety net, a just-in-case, a thing I needed to have in order to get myself to leave in the first place.

I had talked with my therapist about spending 6 months to a year in Southeast Asia. But it was more of an idea, a concept, than an actual plan. When it came down to it, I needed my return trip booked or I wasn’t going anywhere.

My boss, wonderful woman that she is, let me cry, let me be, and took me home to sleep.

The next morning, my baby girl Butter passed away in her cage. She was a good 2.5 years old. The last of my 7 rattie girls. The best girls. My babies. It was the end of an era.

There was nothing to hold me back in New York anymore, just me, myself, and a lifetime’s worth of anxiety and self-doubt.

I got on that plane.

I arrived in Chiang Mai International Airport 2 days later, jet lagged and afraid of everything. I changed a couple hundred USD to Thai Baht, ordered a taxi at the little airport booth, and was off to what would be my new home for the next 7 days.

It’s hard to describe the way I felt at that time. Right now, I’m not gonna try.

Hungry, I convinced myself that I was not. Alone in an unfamiliar place, too scared to go out and get some food. I spent the first 48 hours or so inside, in bed, eating nothing but the mini package of chocolate cookies I hadn’t eaten on the plane, and an instant noodle soup I’d gotten at a Singapore airport lounge on one of my layovers.

It took everything in me to eventually open up the Grab app, think Uber/UberEATS of Southeast Asia, and look at the options. On my first try, I ordered from a tiny burger place literally across the street from me, closest I could find. I ordered for pickup, wanting so badly to go outside but too scared to put myself on the spot with ordering in person or walking too far in the pouring rain. This felt like as good as I was going to get for the moment.

I remember walking across the street, through the Chiang Mai rainy season downpour in my thin blue rain jacket which I may as well have not even been wearing, for all the good it did me. I hadn’t yet made it to the 7-Eleven for a “proper” poncho. I picked up my little burger and fries, gluten free be damned, and headed back home to eat it.

I was terrified. I was on high alert. I was so proud of myself.

The next time I ordered food, I got enough for several days and stored it all in the fridge in my room. The anxiety I felt ordering food, having another human bring it to me, going downstairs to meet said human, thanking them, and heading back to my room, was too much. I wasn’t going to do it twice if I could help it.

Everything I did that week, every tiny little normal piece of being alive, took 100% of my energy. I wanted to go home. I also really didn’t. But there is something comforting in the familiar, as awful as it might be, and nothing in Thailand was familiar. I was tired.

Looking back, it feels like I didn’t do much that week. Looking back again, it feels like I actually did everything.

I made plans to meet up with a friend of a friend who picked me up and took me for coffee, a beautiful soul who made me feel a little less alone for a couple hours.

I went to another coffee shop, alone, and ordered a coffee and a brownie and sat and ate it there.

I took a taxi to the Chiang Mai Zoo, kind of looked at the animals, and then walked the 45 minutes back through the town and back to my hotel.

I took a random walk.

I found a 7-Eleven and bought myself a poncho.

With a little help and a lot of convincing, I forced myself to book a massage, made it there and back, and while I couldn’t relax even a little bit, I made it through.

I ordered food. Again.

I was doing things.

When the week was up, I packed up my stuff, ordered a Grab car to Pai, and was off to my next adventure. A story for another time.