Tuesday, April 30, 2013

I have a dream.

Some people dream of heaven or nirvana or world peace or retirement or true love.  My dream is that I live long enough and accrue enough wealth (via no particular effort on my part) to afford for science to map and clone my brain, and download myself into a sweet nano-bot avatar and spend eternity exploring the universe.

For more information on how you can contribute to my dream, please see these sites:

http://2045.com/
http://www.mprize.org/

On the off-chance I never achieve my dream, consider this blog Plan B.  Hopefully someday some hista-bot will be able to scrape enough data from these jots to create a video-game character, or maybe construct a historical Giga-pet-Jack! that will transcend time on my behalf.

This is the first time I've written anything publicly in a long time. Definitely the first time since I left the states. There's a reason for this, and I'm afraid most of the blogs I've written and want to write about won't be published, not for a while anyway.  Instead of getting into the "whys" I'll just say that I find relationships to be impossible endeavors and I understand why most of my favorite authors never had any successful ones to speak of.

I've spent the last 2 weeks or so cooped up in a hotel room in Bangkok indulging an embarrassingly serious internet addiction. In 4 days I return home with my tail between my legs.  My vague reasoning for leaving SE Asia, which I casually offer to both myself and everyone who asks, is that the winds of destiny are calling me to a land with with tacos and a more romantic language.

A more poignant reason, one that I try to avoid contemplating too much, is that under the guise of career hunting, I've spent the last 4 months carelessly exploring some of the world's most beautiful, exotic, and welcoming regions with my now ex-lover and best friend.  And while I am confident that the thrilling moments and adventures we shared will always be cherished memories, our parting wasn't entirely pleasant. I've not received a word from her since.

As an act of courtesy to everyone involved (I'm sure I inflict enough ennui on my readers as it is) I won't be going into any details, but suffice to say I came away from it all feeling very much the bad guy. You may call me "Monster"

Though the split itself was hardly a surprise and (if we're brutally honest) probably a bit overdue, I've found myself functionally crippled by the weight of the loss and my will to "make the best" deflated by guilt.  God, I'm sorry I'm still skirting this shit. Honestly there's nothing I want more than to delve into every nitty gritty happenstance and air out my filthy laundry in all its twisted glory, but I made a promise not to go there so I'm afraid my readers will just have to settle for this angsty FML middle-school mush while I preserve the juicy therapy sessions in my private stash (not that it'd even be safe there from SOME people)

The point is, everywhere I go here I'm somehow reminded that I've deeply hurt someone who cared about me more than anyone else I've ever met.  I can't return to the beautiful Railay beach where we shared weeks of diving and climbing in paradise. Chiang Mai is haunted by the Elephants that we never had a chance to see but promised each other we would. Cambodia and Laos are simply wrought with the fury of love and war.

And here in Bangkok? It's my most convenient option. Every 7-Eleven (and believe me, you cant walk 100 meters without passing 5 of them) reminds me of buying a new bottle wine everyday even though the wine here is unequivocally shit and we could never actually finish a single glass of the last bottle.  In the metro my heart sinks every time I hear the bilingual recording announce the "Naa Naa" station like taunting child and I have nobody to smirk with. What was once an almost thrilling midnight "mission" down to the hotel lobby for guilty pleasure take-out food has become an agonizing walk of shame. My unmanageable clutter mocks me, my unpackable bags just lie there and sneer, and now how am I ever supposed to finish our favorite shows??? Game of Thrones? Scrubs? Big Bang Theory? Suits?  The Wire?!?  They all reek of loss.  Everything in this whole damn sub-continent is hellbent on reminding me that my closest ally and companion is gone.

And all the things that I found myself coveting before? The freedom to have my own schedule, eat wherever I want, look at and hangout with whoever I want, and just basically live untethered to needs and expectations of another person? I have yet to take advantage of a single new freedom availed to me (other than the freedom to slump in bed all day and mindlessly skip from one useless internet page or funny picture to the next). I just haven't been able to find the energy.

Ok ok, so enough with the self-pity.  I knew this was going to be a difficult transition and despite how much everything sucks right now, I wouldn't go back.  I might have done things differently given the chance, but my journey has always been destined to be a solitary one and I came to terms with this fact long ago.

The good news is that I'm writing again.

Plan B - Check