wherever you go, there you are

i was talking with my therapist ... yes i am seeing a therapist regularly which some people will say is a positive choice in dealing with my situation in a healthy way.  while i'm sure other people will tell me is highly inappropriate to discuss in a public place, because i will be judged on my mental defeat, and how dare i admit that i actually need help.  oh i just can't win.  where was i?

oh yeah, so i was talking with my therapist and she suggested that i need to take a break from work.  "just leave," she said, "you need a break.  go and chill out for a month in Bali or something."

while this is a lovely idea in the abstract, i couldn't help but wonder what the fuck would i do in Bali for a month by myself? this would be awful. i'd be in paradise. alone. with all my thoughts. with no one to talk to. with nothing to do. with no schedule. with no structure.  with nothing to distract me from it all. just me, myself and i thinking about how absolutely terrible everything is and how devastated i am and how i feel like my life and everything i hold dear has been destroyed.

i'd still have all that ... but in Bali.

then i remembered that i actually am going to Bali for easter, but i am going with the Fabulous Fifi so that's a bit different.  "you need to go somewhere NOW," Ms. Therapist said.  not in easter.  and then i remembered that i was in fact traveling to thailand the following week.  how this slipped my mind i really don't know. but she seemed pleased with the idea of me going to thailand for Chinese New Year.

she talked about how peaceful it would be and all the opportunities for mindfulness there would be. and she suggested that maybe my days wouldn't all blur together in such a meaningless haze if i pushed myself out of my comfort zone and did something different. maybe try rock climbing.

fine. i am a risk-taker, as they say. these are all good ideas. in my typical overzealous-bordering-on-OCD fashion, i will try all these things. i'll do the yoga and the rock climbing and the stand-up paddle boarding and the thai boxing and i'll take time out each day to do short meditations in a place of natural beauty.

i'll do all the stuff. because dear blog readers despite whatever you might think, i am actually doing all the right things.

so here i am in thailand. i am here. but i'm still me. the sad reality is that wherever you go, you're still with yourself. that's the only person you can never escape.

me pretending to be okay in Krabi

so i'm here and it's the first time i'm on vacation without the Bolshevik. and i know he's on vacation too, but without me. and that's how it'll be from no on. forever. that's how he wants it. everything reminds me of him: motorbikes, crab legs, beach-front tattoo parlors, sunblock, boat rides, street food, bars that sell low-quality cocktails out of plastic buckets, foot massages ... every single thing brings up memories of him and our adventures together. and it's killing me.

and where is he?  he's in malaysia.  he decided to go to the first asian country we ever visited.  where we climbed up hundreds of stairs to see buddhist shrines and we fed monkeys and we trekked through the jungle to see the largest flower and we ate fresh strawberries from a mountainside farm.  where we went to a tropical island and ate dinner at a little seafood shack on the beach and he asked me to marry him.

he. went. on. vacation. to. the. place. where. he. proposed. to. me. let that sink in dear blog readers.  because it fucking haunts me daily.

and i'm here crying because i did one of those fish foot spas and we used to do that together. meanwhile he is traipsing around a country full of our best memories without a care in the world.  that's how few fucks he gives about me and about what we had.