A confession and an argument

I'll confess it: I'm ready to come home.

Not to throw in the towel here, but to rest and recuperate.

It's not that I want to go home, but to say, "Help me. Take care of me until I'm strong enough to fight," and to rest without fear of further attack until I'm back in action.

No, that's an overstatement.

It would be enough to take a break from fighting, to feel protected. Another trip to the hospital would douse the spark--I'd collapse into the wheelchair or gurney until someone else made something else happen.

I've been sick, sore, and tired for months on end, and I'm exhausted from the effort to appear otherwise. To give up even that effort would be a blessing.

Home is not just that possibility, but of letting go the daily challenges of daily life--living on schedule and maintaining as close as I can come to respectability--and devoting full energies to recuperation.

"You feel okay? You're lookin' a little pale this morning."

Well, my liver and kidneys are shutting down, my blood doesn't have enough body to circulate, and I weigh as much as the average Thai fourth grader, but, "Yeah, running behind and low on caffeine, but by the time I finish a couple cups I'll be charging at the second grade."

It's not that I want to stop fighting, but that I want the chance to get on my feet before getting jump kicked again; home is not necessarily a safe house, but a place where they won't kick until you're at least up enough to feel disoriented.

I know I'm in Thailand because there are no sofas, the beds are made out of coconut husks, I'm dumb and illiterate, drool at the thought of a potato, let alone a french fry, and I can't understand a scrap of the gossip.

What about the booze and bimbos, narcotics and neurotics? Not that I want to partake, but to witness the Thailand that 's drawn generations of Americans.

I can honestly say that I have not been to any bars or restaurants in town, just roadside carts. It would be a point worth noting, perchance a matter of pride or shame, were it intentional. But the reality is that I just haven't had the energy; when I've been traveling, I've had no options but to eat out, and I've been in places with tourist menus. At home, it's easier to boil a bag of ramen.

What I'm after is a shot at success without being undercut by physical illness.

"You're just sitting there talking to the kids, but it'd be great if you were with them dancing and stuff."

Wouldn't I love to.

"Here's why I wasn't." Lift the pantlegs to show the swollen-shiny sausages of an elderly obese man.

When you're pushing thirty and weigh what you did at a zipper-thin twelve, stamina takes on a different meaning. Add to the oenus of smiling and gadding about the physical necessities of mending bone and tissue, compounded by the Thai diet, and it stirs into a horrible mess.

Last week, every class asked me if I really was the one who wrecked in front of Carrefour. Last night, the taxi driver who brought me home said, "You wreck in front of Carrefour, no? Bad news, farang and motocy. Bad news."

What's polite is to laugh. When do I get to sob? This culture so strongly emphasizes maintaining face that I've smile and limped through the past three months, but now I'm done. I just don't have the reserves. No more reaching deep down to pull up a fake smile.

I want to go home so that's not expected.

I want to go home so I will be allowed to feel miserable.

The only thing that scares me more than having to keep fighting is what would happen after I got home and back on my feet. Here, I have a respectable job in an institution I enjoy and a place I would love to explore. Even if I have a shitty job next term, I have a respectable paycheck and the opportunity to learn Reiki, Thai Massage, Reflexology, to explore this culture and climate. I'll certainly be in a position to learn the culture and awkwardly adolescent youth, and I might get the chance to work with kidlets before I come home. All of this would be wonderful, and it's all here. It's all available now, if only I was in a position to avail myself.

And if I flew home? What next?

"Something would come up. Something always does."

Great, but how's "something" compare to what I have here? Last time I tried to find a job, stepping up to a minimum wage deal took 6 months of applying. And now that I've whittled everything away here, if I leave I have memories of hospitals and sickness, pain and loneliness and loss and alienation, punctuated by a few glowing encounters with remarkable individuals. If I left now, I really would have no interest in returning.

Yet there is an inherent pride and beauty in the people, and I want to witness it outside the hospital. The stout nurse whose name would be Brunhilda elsewhere, the lady who at home would be a righteously obese soap opera primadonna, the jolly-fat girl working the grill station at a food court all have an inner glow, a spark in their demeanor, like the pageant queens parading in full costume. The male doctors smell of expensive cologne, and despite vests bleached unrecognizable by sun, rain, smog, and smoke, the taxi drivers, no matter what time of day, smell of fresh laundry.

And there were moments--the snaggle-toothed old woman smiling and spooning extra horseshoe crab eggs into my som tam, or driving through soft evening air after a thunderstorm, winding between rice paddies while egrets flew between towering palm trees toward sunbeams backlighting a towering thunderhead occasionally sparking lightning toward a mountain covered in primordial jungle--that make met want to see more.

So I'm sticking it out. I want this. Bad.

Just, sometimes, at the end of a long day, when I'm sore and tired, hungry and weary from keeping up the effort of appearing less slick and miserable, it's hard to chin up, especially when one of my higher-ups is saying, "No, really, YOU CAN GO HOME. It'd be okay." It's hard not to take it as a hint, not to want to act.

Good thing that's not an option.