Unconclusions

This story starts 7 months later.

I had left Thailand in November. Months earlier than scheduled and one job uncompleted. Barely started really. A headache for all of those involved to be exact.

I had started teaching in Ayutthaya at their government school. Fuck. Thinking about it now, as I sit here on a park bench in Toronto by Lake Ontario (the geography of myself and the city), it seems like a half memory. Partially mine and partially from some other person who went to Thailand, got a certificate in teaching English as a second language and taught at a high school in Thailand. Two weeks into starting that school I was smacked with the worst case of “homesickness” that I thought was possible. I can barely even describe it as homesickness. The phrase is too cute. It doesn’t encapsulate the complete and utter dark, depressing feeling that swallows you whole and vomits you back up. It’s not a missing of my home, but a feeling of being abandoned. I stood up in front of these children never knowing what to say or what to teach. I had these grand notions of talking about Shakespeare or the meaning of the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock in The Great Gadsby. WHAT THE FUCK?! LIKE….WHAT?! I stood in front of these children and they could barely understand “hello, how are you?” What the fuck had I done? What was I to do? Well I never did think about how to fix this because my body shut down and my mind snapped in half. I couldn’t leave my bed and the thought of going back to school to stand in front of those blank, vacant eyes, but still so full of hope that Teacher Chad will help them to speak English.

That third weekend I booked a plane ticket back home and left.

I left behind a 3 bedroom house in a gated community in Ayutthaya and a motor bike and my friend. I left her all alone in Thailand to fend for herself.

With barely any notice, I left for Bangkok for a week to hide in a hotel from the bullshit I left behind. I barely left my bed. I couldn’t. What had I done? I felt so ashamed. So ashamed that I couldn’t handle my anxiety and depression.

There was fun in Bangkok breifly. Alicia, the Saint that she is, came to visit me and gave me one last goodbye before I ran the fuck home to hide again. We saw a ladyboy show, and some beautiful sights that only Bangkok could offer.

And there are more sights that were not taken for evidence. They exist only in my mind.

I miss Thailand. I miss the experience that I could have had. I miss the opportunities that may have been presented, the people I could have met, those that I left behind. There’s much I want to do when I go back and there’s much I am thankful for after leaving there. The short two months were very revealing to me. It set into motion the drive that exists in me currently: my music career.

I had to give everything up, including creating a giant financial hole, to remind me that my music is all I ever wanted. It would never have been enough to just have gone on vacation for two months. No. Ha! I can’t be fooled so easily. I needed to think I was going to live there and to get rid of most of.my possessions to have a moment of “well I don’t want to do this. I want to sing and perform.” And I am greatful for that.

Fast forward 7 months.

I’m in Toronto and living a better life than before, certainly. A fairly healthy romantic relationship for the first time ever (huh, who knew they exist for gay people), my friends by my side, people hearing my voice and a job I don’t hate. Things are coming up Milhouse!

I needed to provide this unconclusion for anyone reading and mostly for me. I’m okay now. That’s important. You wouldn’t have been able to tell from my last post and that’s how these things are. They go unchecked, undiscovered and sometimes suffered alone. If you’re out there, Houston in the dark, know that it’s okay. I’ll be alright. And I hope you are too. And I hope all of those around you are. We have precious little time left, so hold them tight.

A picture to deacribe:

We have little time left on this earth and Mother Nature is letting us know. As I look out over Lake Ontario it makes me feel that there is a vastness still left to my life and the possibilities that remain are great. However, just under the break of the waves that shouldn’t be there are the jagged rocks. I see them. I know why they are there. It’s Mother Nature taking back what’s hers. The earth is dying and it’s our fault. You can be tricked by the beauty of this lake, but in its details are something much more sinister and are playing out their endgame. In this picture, there is Caution tape advising those to not go too close. How literal and metaphorical. The yellow tapes that prevent us from saving this world, the yellow tape warning us of the inevitable and the yellow tape telling us that if we are too close you may fall in and become like the rocks underneath. You can almost hear the air siren horns that will soon be the soundtrack to this world as much as the sound of automobiles were to generations before us.

This will be are very own unconclusion.