I see my reflection on the skytrain window, against the dark Bangkok night. I appear older than I feel, and I wonder if 10 years is really so terribly much? I am thankful of the years I spent alone, between all the seriousness and settlement. Of the years when my wardrobe was filled with dresses and skirts shining in disco lights. When the I shoes I loved wearing the most were my disco boots, my lucky boots.
How time truly passes. How phases of life truly pass without a warning. How short youth is, and how it has passed before you even realized what you should be doing with it. And how I refuse to think mine is over.
I am 36, nothing is over. Except my days of self destruction, my days of seeking validation from outside. What is so significant in youth? What did I do with mine? I danced until my legs could not carry me anymore, allowed any fool to take me home, just for fun, just because I could.
It’s not those times I miss. I have always known that my deeper meaning and purpose will reveal itself later on in life. Later, even later. When my hair is long and completely gray, I will still sit in cafes and write. I will still feel things, I will still reflect, I will still think about the different phases of life and ponder. Of the marriage, of the divorce, of the adultery and of being a mistress. Of studying hard, pretending hard to love the things I didn’t, of jumping into the unknown and living on a tropical island and then again wanting to leave the island life behind.
I see my reflection, and I see Bangkok. I see, but I did not get to know it. I am in it, but I did not enter it fully. I did not come here to meet Bangkok, I came here to meet myself. And that is what I have done. In trains, in movie theaters, in my tiny rental apartment looking out on the high rising buildings of Bangkok. I have not been open to anyone, not even to the man who woke me up from my post-movie haze.
“A lot of books” I heard a mans voice when I was aimlessly looking at books piled up on the ground floor of a shopping mall.
Indeed, a lot of books, but none in English.
“Shitty books” the man laughs and takes another bite of his chocolate ice-cream.
I smile and move past him. I appreciate his contact, but there is nothing I am willing to chat about. Not here, not like this, not with him.
What I am interested in is hearing who are you when you describe yourself not by what you do now, but what you would like to do. Tell me what you really are!
Me, I’m a writer, teller of stories and and a describer of life. I could paint you the world in beautiful pictures and inner reflections. I could sweep you off your feet with my words.
