SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT
At dawn on the morning of January 1st the streets were empty save for the two of us. Up and down the deserted back alleyways we walked, searching for a temple I'd seen on the map but could never actually find. The map was outdated and recently had us circling shops that had since moved or closed, but temples don't move. As the sun began to peek its long face onto our street we turned a corner. I told him I was moving out. My boyfriend of two and a half years nodded. I had already packed my things. "Basic studios cost $7 a night and we need space." We had needed space for as long as I could remember, but space is a luxury you can't afford when you live and work together. So we bought time instead, but the need had only intensified since we decided to travel around the world. We called it the End of the World Tour in a tip to the Mayans and it led us to jobs in Koh Samui and this attempt at a new start in Chiang Mai.
This is where my story begins. At the end of a long trip, at the beginning of a new year, across the world from home, friends, and family. All we had was each other and all we needed was space. So we decided to break up. I felt a nauseating mix of terror and relief. At some point I kicked off my flip-flops and ran away, then walked back, sat at a cafeteria table across from him and sobbed while Thais slurped their first jok gai of the new year. We never found the temple.
Founded in 1296 as the new capital of the Kingdom of Lanna Chiang Mai literally means 'new city.' Hundreds of Buddhist temples scatter the town like breadcrumbs for the spiritually hungry. Over five million visit every year, and while it may be Thailand's second largest city after Bangkok, Chiang Mai is also an exceedingly small town. A. and I ran into each other the night we broke up. He walked into the restaurant where I was eating, laughing with a mutual friend. Standing scarcely five feet away and scanning the room for a table, his eyes peered through me. I was empty and formless and now, apparently, invisible. "Take-away" I whispered to the motherly figure behind the counter, then grabbed my food and pitched into the night. Tuk-tuks and songtaos honked and swerved to avoid me. I focused my bleary eyes on the street and let my body carry me back to my room, where all the stages of grief tumbled over me. My body curled into itself and shook. Strangled sounds I'd never heard before echoed off the peeling walls. I was a baby again, spit out of my home into a searingly bright, unforgivingly cold world. I wanted to climb back inside my relationship and pretend reality was a bad dream I would soon wake from.
At the heart of Chiang Mai lies its Old City, a perfect square grid surrounded by a narrow moat and scattered sections of wasting brick. The city is Thailand's crown jewel and spiritual epicenter and it was once worth defending. The apartment A. and I shared lied in the northeast section in the backpacker ghetto. After we'd broken up I walked past the borders of the Old City to find my current refuge on a quiet soi. Our planet is littered with walled cities- Jerusalem, Berlin, Bruge. These barricades may have worked long ago against invading forces, but modern eyes reveal the world's crumbling walls as merely an illusion of separation. You can't keep the flow of energy, time and change out anymore than you can keep it in. Nevertheless I seized upon the same belief an ancient citizen might. The wall was what I needed to be safe. The next morning I move to another guesthouse a few blocks away, resolved to keep the Old City's moat and invisible wall between us.
Any traveler can tell you- no matter how long and far you go or how little you've fed them along the way, thoughts of home will trail like beggars behind you. A low and slender stone building tucked inside the far corner of a Long Island nature preserve, our home was like a cottage from a fairytale. The property boasted castles, horses and hiking trails that led down to a long sandy beach. We'd gather mussels from mossy rocks and barbecue them for friends on the Fourth of July. We planted seeds with dollops of our own spit and feasted from the organic garden that resulted. With the peculiar mix we'd become of domestic and wild, city and country, I'd never in my life been happier. We called our apartment the Chicken Coop, in honor of the building's original purpose. There was also the Dog Kennel, the Duck Nursery and a host of similar stone structures whose roofs had caved in and nature asserted her dominance over man once again. The roof of our home was fortified and strong, but with time and neglect it too had caved away in the end.
I resolve to keep moving, throw on some clothes and set off to explore my new neighborhood. Chiang Mai has a thriving tourist industry and one lucky by-product is the abundance of used bookshops. Walking up and down the musty aisles revives me. Some folks like to comfort eat. Me, I like to comfort read, and I had found a veritable buffet. There was all of Jonathan Franzen and Don DeLillo and Joan Didion's work, trains waiting to transport me. Reading was one of those things I loved that there was never time for, like going to the movies. Elbow to elbow, A. and I were always working. He was fanatical about being productive, as if the world would stop if some promo video wasn't completed. Sometimes I fell asleep on the office floor, only to wake in bewilderment and discover it was five a.m. on a weekday. He would apologize, we would leave and the next day would be a wash. I was leaving the office on my own more and more, and beginning to read again when we moved to Chiang Mai.
When Backstreet Books spits me onto the street a few paperbacks heavier, I detour into the closest temple. I bow three times to the smirking gold Buddha who looms over the room, fold my legs beneath me and assume the customary position. Seven uneasy minutes later I crumple. Lord Buddha, The Awakened One, simply smiles at my tears. His perspective is a gift and I'm reminded why 95% of Thais worship this Indian prince. Here I am, sitting in an ancient temple on a beautiful day in an incredible city, and I am miserable. I resolve to try again. I let my body relax, focus my thoughts on my breath and close my eyes. And just like that I experience a glimpse of the space that A. and I had tried and failed to find together. Like the placing of a puzzle piece that finally makes the picture apparent, I suddenly see my life from a vaster and varied perspective. Every delight and every sorrow leading me to this place and the opportunity to heal within its sacred temples. Tears of joy cascade down my cheeks and I meet the Buddha's knowing smile with my own.
When this tide of initial energy and excitement finally swells, breaks, and recedes, the city loses a bit of its sheen. It's hot. And dirty. The holy temples suddenly remind me of tourist attractions with gawking farang shuffling through in their souvenir fisherman pants and hilltribe fanny packs. They're sick of giant gold Buddhas but they need the pictures to prove it. They haggle mercilessly with market vendors in order to save a few baht and lie in tight little rows on reclining chairs as Thai women massage their bunions. I disdain these people but recognize myself in them. Another tourist basking in a culture far older and richer and wiser and cheaper than my own. Something has turned here. At the threshold of a tiny side street temple a dog growls at me. I stumble upon a cockfight training session and watch as two birds are incited to attack each other. At dusk the mosquitoes arrive and take turns landing on that one last nerve I've managed to hold onto. I need to get out if this city.
I decide to take a bus to Pai, a notorious little hippie town three hours to the north. The bus station is crowded and stale and I have to wait an hour and a half for the van, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise. As the first ticketed fare I am assigned Seat 1A where I feel like a pilot instead of a passenger. The steep road that leads to the city snakes up through the mountains in a series of steady twists and turns. I cue up the soundtrack of my former life and put on my sunglasses, ready to weep through this ritual. Instead I find myself smiling and reminded of the many road trips I took with A. Route 1095 on the Mae Hong Son loop in northern Thailand looks remarkably like North Carolina, New Hampshire and especially the road to Becket, Massachusetts, the place we fell in love. Such a funny thing time. Here I am running towards some future unknown only to find myself barreling into the past instead. I could expect such hauntings for months to come, I knew that much. Long-buried memories would be resurrected in the light of day before this relationship was done with me. Breaking up was the easy part. It's dealing with ghosts that still live and walk in this world that's hard.
Despite being a fraction of the size of Chiang Mai, I begin to finally meet people in Pai. An English boy who is refreshingly naive when it comes to relationships and heartbreak. A Belgian man who asks me for directions and ends up giving advice and support over margaritas. An Australian girl visiting the country to honor the memory of her best friend who had always wanted to see it. These strangers seem to me like angels. They become my confidantes and companions and with them I climb waterfalls, soak in hot springs and witness the sunset return of a thousand swallows to their cave-dwelling nests. The days are packed and distracting and for that I am grateful, but each night and morning brings an unavoidable awareness of the loss that these gains are built on. In bed with the lights off I hug myself in a scant simulation of the tangle of arms and legs that once heralded sleep and wake. I chant his name like an invocation or a mantra or a curse, anything to keep the silence at bay.
Every morning I inevitably find myself at Good Life, a rustic, homey restaurant whose stellar atmosphere balances out its sup bar cuisine. I run into a Couchsurfing acquaintance from a Chiang Mai meet up and she tells me about a forest monastery a few towns away that offers meditation retreats. Within twenty four hours I find myself standing at its gates. Nestled at the foot of a mountain, Wat Tham Wua's wide green grounds host meditation caves wallpapered with rose quartz and a humble waterfall that feeds into a babbling brook. The whole place feels like a temple. Here, at last, was a place to rest. Not to remember and not to forget, but to simply let things be.
Vipassana meditation retreats in Thailand vary with austerity and expectation but at the core of each is the meditation practice. You are provided two vegetarian meals a day and encouraged to fast for dinner. Showers are frigid and the mattress consists of two straw mats on the floor, but still I find the lofted bungalow accommodations luxuriously private. There are no blogs to read, no status updates to scour, no communication with the outside world at all. You are trapped and you are free all at once. At first I am restless, my mind leapfrogging from muddy reflections on the past to the luminous potentials of my future. In sitting meditation I learn that I am excellent at entertaining myself. In walking meditation I discover that my steps are too wide and when I slow down my gait becomes imbalanced. I am learning and practicing plenty, but find a state of true peace and acceptance maddeningly elusive.
I wish I could tell you that the forest temple cracked me open. That it stilled my mind and healed my heart, taking every last trace of sadness, longing and regret with it. But it is just another place where the process continues. I look around me to the other students, past their disparate accents and faces and pasts. Everyone who is here is here to make peace with change. As searing as my loss is, as personal as it feels, it is not unique. Thailand's ubiquitous catchphrase comes to mind. The heartbreak I feel is 'same same but different' than countless others like me. As one of a kind me and my ex, our relationship, and its end are, it is an old story that only feels brand new. I realize now that the path I am traveling is not one that began with this breakup, it is instead a passage that all human beings must walk. It is the long, hard, lonely road of letting go. And while I do feel blessed to find myself in Thailand, where I can sit before a Buddha, and find refuge at a retreat, the truth is that wherever I was in the world right now I would be walking this same road. It runs through all places, all experiences, all relationships. I may curse, I may fall, I may try to run the other way, but the road will always be there, beckoning me forward and waiting to take me home.
On the night of December 30th I got a mild case of food poisoning that had me heaving into the wee hours. The experience left me wholly uninterested in celebrating the new year at a Thai nightclub. So I gave my boyfriend my blessing and resolved to watch a movie and read at home. As the night progressed I found myself anxious and unfocused, plagued by a single thought. It never occurred to him to stay. The thought multiplied and birthed a thousand variations until I found myself cataloguing the things that I would never ask for and he would never offer. As midnight approached the din and roar of the streets became undeniable. The night was summoning me out. I placed the padlock on our rickety door and followed the shouts.
