Three Month Review

A story of numbers

3 months in Thailand, and so far I've:

lost my music gig

trained in Reiki

driven 4500 kliks

visited 3 other cities

moved 3 times

made it through 3 wrecks

totaled the bike (T-boned in a hit and run)

collapsed my zygomatic arch (1st scooter incident)

popped a couple of ribs, tweaked my diaphragm, damaged my rotator cuff, collected significant abrasions (2nd scooter incident)

fell down a concrete stairway with one scrape and no bruises

eaten some fantastic and fantastically bizarre food

lost 15 kilos

My authorial side can't take it, so let the numbers break into narrative:

After the third scooter incident, I was bleeding on the asphalt while a crowd--including a significant number of my students' parents--watched an ambulance come and haul my 40 kilos of defeat to a hospital, where they said nothing was wrong and gave me Tylenol. When I went back, the morning doctor confirmed a fractured thumb, wrapped me in a cast, and sent me home with mild narcotics.

It broke me.

I would've come home, was told I could go home, was encouraged to leave, but I love the potential of what I have here, and if I were to go home, I can't imagine what would happen after I could stand upright without my blood separating. Another 6 month search for a dead-end job? Why would I leave a respectable job with a respectable salary in a fascinating culture in a spectacular country for the chance to fight my way back into the American economy?

I hit bottom, but there was still enough resilience, still enough incentive to bounce, if only slightly.

Bad luck, injury, illness, so?

I'm in Thailand. I have a job. I have friends. I can practice Reiki and will learn Thai massage--in Thailand, while staying in a beachside bungalow.

And damn it, I've given a helluva lot to be here, and now that I'm enroute to enjoying it again, no way in hell do I want to leave. It might be inappropriately close to reality, but since it did come so close, I'll venture to say "over my dead body" will I leave Thailand before I'm either ready to or am back on a gurney. And if that happens, all I ask is for enough morphine to sleep until the coming of a new economy.