Chipped and Changed

It dawned on me today that once you do something to someone, or once someone does something to you, it can never be undone.

I made a lot of mistakes in my last relationship. I don't want to get into the details, so, to put it mildly: I hurt someone I loved. I realized that I can be ugly, mean, vengeful, and dishonest. I did not like realizing these things. I want to see myself as a loving, gentle, truthful, and kind person. Bringing up all this- for lack of a better word- shit, was like being thrown into a storm after waking from a restful nap.

Was all of this always here, I wonder? I try to imagine looking at 13-year-old Larissa, who was so completely romantic, who believed in pure, eternal love, who saw the world through pink shades, and telling her, "You're capable of being a hypocrite, a liar, and a cruel, manipulative bitch." It breaks my heart to even think about it. But where did it all come from, then? Were my actions a consequence of circumstance? Have I been molded by life's experiences into a person I could not have foreseen becoming? I don't know. 

Sometimes it's been so difficult to face myself that I've turned away from it all completely. It's been kind of an all-or-nothing phase of analysis and coping. Either I'm all in it, looking at myself and seeing everything I don't like and having mini-anxiety attacks, or I'm all out of it, unable to think about it at all, distracting myself with life and what-not. 

Once upon a time, I could believe I was not capable of certain things, that I was above certain actions, that I was even better than certain thought-processes. Now, for better or for worse, I know things about myself I did not know before- things that I do not like, that I do not admire, and that I do not enjoy in the least. There they are- the chips in my armor.

As I thought about all of this, I realized: I am forever changed. I won't ever get back to square one. I can't erase and re-write my life. I am not 13 and pure. I am 25 and chipped. Tainted, imperfect, flawed. But also, I recognize, human. Grown, learned, lived.

I wish I hadn't hurt someone in order to learn the lessons I had to learn. I wish it had been cleaner. I wish I'd been responsible. I wish I'd known better. But it happened the way it did, and now I have to carry that around with me.

Though it's difficult to keep this in check, I know the bad doesn't cancel out all the good. My capacity to hurt someone does not kill my capacity to love. I can be mean, yes, but that doesn't mean I can't be kind. I can be bitter, and also sweet. I can be forgiving, and also remorseful. I can cause pain, but I can also bring joy.

I can be chipped and changed, but my heart is still beating.

Bic

A Buddha's hand in Ayutthaya

I wish instead that I had a picture of Bic to show you but I don't. Like many Thais, he was of Chinese ancestry. He lived beneath my room in the staff quarters. He was one of only two receptionists in my little guesthouse. They tended to work from either seven in the morning till four in the afternoon or from then till one in the morning.

Bic was thirty two. On the Sunday evening before last I bid him good night as I folded the Bangkok Sunday Post but he chased after me, catching me up on the stairs.

"Mr Pud. Mr Pud I go leaving."

"What? You're leaving Bic? When?"

"Tonight. I go tonight."

I couldn't believe it. Bic was my chum. I had taken him out for a couple of meals and in return he'd invited me to a bar where he insisted on returning the favour. He was with Kat who is a receptionist in the adjacent massage parlour. In Chiang Mai I bought Bic a souvenir T-shirt and one day he bought me a blueberry muffin from a nearby bakery. Bic made me laugh and I made him laugh.

"But why Bic? Why are you leaving?"

He looked away self-consciously and paused, wondering what to say and then he announced in his pidgin English, "Me bad sometarm."

I didn't want to push him for I could see that he was close to tears. We shared a manly hug. I put a five hundred baht note in his palm to say "thanks" for his kindness and good humour and we said goodbye.

Since he departed so suddenly, I have tried to find out the truth about why he left and from each witness I get a different story. Had he stolen money? Had he been hitting the bottle? The lady owner - Thida - said she had absolutely no idea why Bic had left. The other receptionist, Leila, said he had resented demeaning criticism from the owners' daughter. A cleaner suggested that he had been having an affair with Kat from the massage parlour. That Sunday night Bic told me he would be going back to his family home in Hua Hin but a couple of days ago Leila said he had moved in with Kat who is married with two children.

Sometarm the truth is as elusive as a dream that steals away with the dawn. Perhaps I will never know why Bic left.

I remember one night, not long after I arrived in Thailand when Bic confided in me that he was still broken-hearted about the ending of his most significant love affair. It had lasted seven years - he said - and he still thought of that woman every hour of every day even though they had been parted for some three years. He said he had never told anybody about his utter distress before and I said he needed to "move on" but I didn't mean literally.

Like atoms on the move randomly colliding, we never know whose paths we will cross. Bic was just somebody I met along the way. People come and people go. What more is there to say?

Ooty Rose Show Photos - 2011