Saltwater

They say that saltwater is very healing, that if you dip your cuts into the stinging water they close faster. But saltwater also dehydrates. It leaves you thirsty but keeps you covered. Something like that.

Don't tell Adrienne, but I dipped my hair in saltwater today. I clogged the sink with a washcloth and looked up the salinity of the Gulf of Thailand and did the math incredibly incorrectly and filled the basin with a haphazard, hand-wavey, eyeballed cup full of table salt for the water and I put in my head. 

Sidebar: for someone who does calculus for a living, I can sure screw up an arithmetic problem. I'll blame it on jetlag and hormones and stress because I can and that's what I do every day anyway.

Anyway.

Most of the world and most of us is water, and most of that water is salty. Can't get by without it, can't cry without it, can't sweat, can't bleed. And my Fraggle Rock curls look their best when they've been soaked in grimy saltwater.

While in Tonsai Beach, I spent most of my time by myself under the water. I went into a cave and met a friend called Hanna, and then we went into the water together. After that, we hiked to the top of the craggy rocks and the saltwater ran out of our pores in single-file rivers. I couldn't get enough of it and at the same time, I couldn't get rid of it fast enough. I was saturated.

I drowned my phone splashing in the saltwater at midnight, looking for crabs so that the local climbing instructor could put them to sleep by rubbing their bellies, and dodging beach spotlights to search for luminous plankton. We didn't find any, but I soaked my shorts and then the phone in my pocket lost one functioning speaker. Luckily, it had come with two.

Then in Otres Beach, I used the saltwater as a hideaway. This is because I couldn't sit on the lovely wooden swing, couldn't lie on the beach cushions, couldn't sit on the barstools without being touched or harassed or called out or bothered. I respect the hustle, but I can't help everyone and I can't relax when this is happening, of course. I found that the only way to hide from this was to run into the ocean; floating on my back and diving into the murkiness until the entrepreneurs had moved on.

Sometimes I would come back to the shore because there was a dog who lived nearby, and he liked to lean on me and lick the saltwater off of my face while we were battered by the breaking waves. And that onslaught was far more kind than the reality of the financial imperialism surrounding us or the women who wanted to rip out my leg hairs with thread.

But then one night, after we had established some sort of a dirtbag, misfit family in our jungle huts on the sand, we woke each other up during the wee hours to hunt for plankton again. Slipping out of swimsuits and shuffling bare-skinned into the warm saltwater, the motion of our fluttering fingers and toes set off a biological alarm within the clouds of tiny plankton.

It was like swimming in glitter. Every time we moved, the plankton set off their flashing, silent sirens. From the pictures I had seen, I didn't understand how dim or small or elusive they would be. I thought it would be more like the glimmering medusae of luminous jellyfish, congealing in an almost indistinguishable mess of slime near the mangroves and glowing blue against the moonlight.

But this was different. This was an open beach, swimming in stars. We could look up into the November sky above and then below, and see a similar phenomenon. Not physically, but empirically. 

We never had much luck getting the salt or sand out of anything while we were there, but I think that's what the artists call "aesthetic." Perhaps the thinly-veiled snobs would call it "charming," but it's what we called "affordable." Slipping through our fingers, the huts won't exist next month...but regardless of the uncontrollable things happening down in southern Cambodia, we got our rent's worth for our time on the sea.

They say saltwater is very healing, that if you dip your head underneath, there exists another world entirely. 

Whoever they are, I think they're right.

Let A Little Air In

There are a lot of things that I admire and respect about backpacking and hosteling communities, and a lot of things with which I could really get on board. One of those things is the book exchange.

At Schuler Books in Okemos, Michigan, USA I picked up a murder mystery from the used section. It was painfully clever and feverishly well written but I did not like it because it did not allow me to escape at all from my deepest pains and prayers. Nevertheless, I finished it and left it at a hostel in Hoi An, Vietnam.

Weeks later with my new friends that I met in Luang Prabang, Laos, I went to a small bookshop and bought a collection of essays by Robert Fulghum. You know, the guy who wrote All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. 

I am now on the island of Phuket in Thailand and I've finished that, and collected a new novel from my hostel here. I imagine I'll leave that somewhere in Cambodia, where I travel tomorrow, or possibly Malaysia if I dilly dally too much.

While Fulghum's essays sometimes exude what can be described in 2018 as the oversimplified opinions and adventures of a privileged white man, they were far ahead of their time for the 1989 publishing date. And I think he really is as genuine as anybody ever could be. I liked the essays, and they resonate with anybody who feels the muchness of their human spirit. 

On October 7th I was in northern Vietnam and I was a mess. I was in pain and didn't know how to deal with it, and I was afraid that I had lost some of the most important love in my life. On November 7th I was on a bus from Phuket Town to the place I'm sitting now, and I was also a mess. I was insecure and didn't know how to deal with it, and behaved so poorly and irrationally that I probably should have lost some of the most important love in my life.

But I didn't. Instead, I was given more love.

So after finishing up Fulghum's essays a few minutes ago, I am understandably emotional. In one of the final pieces, Fulghum tells the story of Hans Ludwig Babblinger from Ulm, a prosthetics craftsman who managed to build a makeshift hang glider and soar from the foothills of the Alps, where there are ample up-currents. 

But when the King came to Ulm and Hans was asked to demonstrate his flying skills, he unintentionally chose a location where there were heavy down-currents and ended up crashing into the river instead of flying. Of course, the church used his mistake as an opportunity to shame the sin of human pride, and Hans shut himself in and eventually died with a broken heart.

People can do that, you know. Die of shame. Because you can die of shame long before you ever physically die.

Except centuries later when Fulghum was riding on a hang glider himself, he thought of Hans and wished he could tell him that he had been rightful in his pursuit of flying. "Look," Fulghum wished he could say, "Look and be not ashamed. Man was meant to fly."

For me, the story is about shame and how it's a big liar that only knows part of the truth. As far as I can tell, none of us really know what to do with shame after we've exhausted ourselves talking and praying and doing and achieving and it still holds on. It's that rock in your chest that shows up when a dog doesn't trust you, or a child (who has never seen a white lady before) looks at your face with dread and cries. That feeling that says, wow, there must be something really wrong with me that only the purest creatures on this Earth can see.

I am feeling well, now. Biochemically, it's because whatever hormones have run their course for this go-around. Spiritually, it's because I've been shown the tremendous depth of how much I am loved.

And that love is deeper than my shame, which persists but so does the love. The shame leaves me exposed but the love wraps me in a blanket. The shame is suffocating, but the love lets a little air in.

So I hope that the book I left today finds its way into the hands of somebody who is tired and can find rest while reading it. Oh -- and I did find a dog who trusted me. Turns out, there are far more friendly dogs than not.

This floppy goof is called Lucky, and he's the best.

Killer Pain

"Oh God, 2018 is not my year," she thinks to herself; herself being some special kind of asshole who had recently finished a M.Sc. abroad and has visited four continents over the past ten months.

Seriously, what a tool.

Solo travel is not making me bananas, but it may be heightening the bananas that I already have growing in my endless grove. Simultaneously, I have met some lovely fast friends and have also felt lost in my own head. And it's really hard to find my way back.

There's almost no way that this is real life, but it is and it is being lived. Here in Laos, I have the very real ability to earn enough money in a few hours to do literally anything I want for an entire week. It's totally rad but also makes me feel like a total joke. I can run parallel to my Lao neighbors but never with them. I'm not sure that I want to, anyway, which also makes me feel like such a piece. I've often been critical of economic divides, but now I am one.

But I also ran into a burning building with my Lao neighbors to try and save it, so I guess I'm not all sugar and entitlement. I am also ash and ember.

Everybody already knows that I don't do well with transition and unknown, so I don't need to talk about that. Instead, I want to talk about superlatives and hyperbole and pain. 

Existing online is different than existing in real life, but I try to bridge the chasm as best as I can. I don't think I would like being a social media promoter because then I'd have to add another seventeen layers of bullshit to an already bullshit-looking existence. Not only would I have to have way fewer curves (or at least have to pretend to love my curves) but I'd have to tell everyone that "I did this and so can you."

I mean, no you can't. Most of you can't. You can't because your priorities are not and have not been my priorities, and most of you fools don't know as much calculus as I do. Most of you don't have my abilities, my connections, or my freedom. 

Part of me just shook her fist at the air, lamenting "but at what cost?!?" 

She's dramatic, but she's also right. A life like this, just like any life like anything, comes at a tremendous cost. And right now in the quiet, in the midst of a schedule that isn't really a schedule, the pain is coming through. Loud and clear and oh look -- another back spasm.

My body is holding pain in my joints and I don't know whether it's holding trauma or harboring injury. My inclinations point to both. But I'm obsessed with pain right now because my internal dialogue has been using words like "always" and "unbearable" when it comes to thinking about my pain.

But it isn't unbearable. I've borne it. I am bearing it. It just can't be borne in a constant or endless sense, and my brain is quick to assign conditions like "constant" and "endless" to whatever I'm feeling in the moment. It recognizes what is unsustainable but wrongly assumes it will sustain forever, and that gets very overwhelming. 

I am hard working and lucky, and also extremely unlucky. Most people are, I suppose. For example, I spent my 28th birthday trekking in the hills of Northern Vietnam and soaking in a relaxing herbal bath in an oaken barrel and drinking rice wine made by a grandpa of the Red Dao tribe.

But I also spent my 28th birthday realizing that this would be the year that I've been holding trauma for officially half of my life and during the span of that half-life, I continue to hear that it's easier to assume survivors of violence are just lying. Safety continues to be a convenience issue, and I break under the weight of that. 

I don't want to carry it, but I also do not submit or surrender so I guess I'm stuck this way for now. I understand and realize that this is unsustainable, but ethical suicide is a logistical nightmare and I can't afford it anyway so I suppose I'll have to keep living. I'm too curious to die, anyway, but I am in enough pain.

I am in enough pain to need it to stop. 

Pain grows the more you think about it. It multiplies and transcends dimensions. Mental stress becomes physical phantom sprains. Trauma becomes a curled spine. Broken hearts become broken breaths. 

Pain demands to be felt and needs to be center stage, then the entire show. It turns rest into restlessness. It turns relationships into bargaining chips. It causes me to question whether the love in my life is genuine. It distorts reality and creates permanent exhaustion. It convinces me that this is normal and that I'm the only one who clearly doesn't know how to deal with it. Pain problems become shame problems.

And during this grand adventure, I can't really introduce myself as Becca from the US, killing time until Christmas, in pain for a living and ashamed of myself despite my good bits. Ignoring it isn't dealing with it, but I can't deal with it if I don't know what I need. I have everything that I need, but I clearly don't.

I don't want a new relationship or a new job or another place to live. I just want to stop being in pain.

Laundry Day

I've left it alone since April. Somebody recently asked me if writing professionally has kept me from writing personally, and I said that it had.

It has.

But also, I've been doing some stuff since April. I finished a Masters degree and I hosted my parents and my friends and I wrapped up my life in Iceland and I went on a worry-free, work-free vacation to Norway and I came home to the US for a few weeks and now I'm in Vietnam.

So.

I don't know how to do nothing, but it's kind of what I have to do right now. But before I talk about how I don't know how to do nothing, I'll briefly explain what's happening to me because it's all sorts of legislative.

My residency in Iceland expired on 15 July, and I used 35 of my 90-out-of-180 days of Schengen "tourist" allowance to stay in Iceland. But since Iceland is in the Schengen alliance, it kind of shuts out much of Europe for me for a while. I didn't want to use the rest of the 55 days because I'll probably need a few in December, and Europe can be pretty expensive anyway. 

So, the solution would be to come home. But since the US doesn't have a double taxation agreement with Iceland, I can't. Because if I come home for more than 5 weeks during the year, then the US will claim tax authority over my Icelandic income, on which I have already paid (or will pay) taxes in Iceland. 

I'm happy to pay taxes, especially in Iceland where they go to nice things like my education and health care. However, I don't want to do it twice. 

So, I went to Southeast Asia: arguably one of the least expensive places on this Earth and with moderately consistent WiFi, I can continue my remote jobs and earn on the USD.

It's literally the most responsible thing that I can do, so I'm doing it and I'm doing it as well as I can. It's a working vacation, but it isn't. It isn't, because I have to actually sustainably live here until December when I'll take a flight from probably Kuala Lumpur to continental Europe and then to Iceland to pick up my winter things and then to Toronto and then home for Christmas, somehow.

A proper round-the-world trip, expedited version.

But I've also put off writing because the things that I'm thinking about lately aren't things that I really want to talk about. Mostly, I think, because I haven't solved any of them yet. And I can't, really. And since life is pretty much great, feeling lousy doesn't make sense. I feel whiny and then I feel worse.

It's the middle again, stuck between the Next Right Things. I'm trying my best and have been competing pretty well, but I haven't found a PhD program yet. This means I haven't found a salary yet, and I haven't found healthcare yet and that really frightens me every time I think about it because I've taken so many meds from Iceland that they wouldn't fill the prescription anymore. And when I run out of meds, I'll need to find some more, but it seems like a mountain I can't climb sometimes. 

And my knees have started to give out, and my back, and I'm not even 28 and what if I can't even climb literal mountains anymore? I can't believe how much they hurt, the joints, the vertebrae. I'm glad for the mountains I have climbed so far, but I thought I had more time.

It upsets me to think about this, because I inevitably compare myself to people who are doing, or at least look like they're doing, much better than me. Much easier, it's unfair, it's impossible. And then I realize that I'm in the middle of a beautiful, mountainous place. Sometimes that's comforting, but sometimes it just makes me feel ashamed of myself.

I don't know what to do, so I try to find PhD jobs and work on little projects and catch up on things and pretend to rest. It's laundry day. I brought a bunch of Tide packets with me, and all they've done is explode in low-pressure cargo holds on the way here. The hostels here will do laundry for me, so I guess I just have a bunch of exploded Tide now.

You all know how much I love metaphors.