I am leaving Thailand. I am leaving Thailand 12.5 months early, to be exact. April 1 marks my last day of work at Top Scholars, and on May 5th I will fly from Bangkok to Seattle, by way of Taipei, and arrive on U.S. soil 17 hours later on…May 5th. God bless the miracles that are time zones and flying East. In the kindest twist of fate, I will spend my first few days back in America on the same Puget Sound waters I wrote about so lovingly in my first blog post last June.
Everything about this impending move feels right. The new city (Berkeley, CA), the new job (Associate Director of College Counseling), the new school (The Athenian School). I am ready for bike rides, California farmer’s markets, cool breezes, protests, old friends, cousin time, and so much more.
My time in Bangkok was indeed a rendezvous with the inevitable, a bracing collision with a new culture, new professional highs and lows, and a new understanding of the things I need in my life to make me happy. This city wrenched me so forcefully from the comfort of my own earth that at times I felt my roots would wither, or dive so deep in search of water that they would forget I also needed light to live.
But as Rilke urges me, “What happens deeply inside you is worthy of your whole love. Work with that and don’t waste too much time and courage explaining it to other people.”
I feel guilt, sadness, shame. I feel relief, elation, hope. I am trying to love all of these feelings. I’m trying to work with them and to trust them, because as Rilke also whispers, “life is in the right in any case.”
