A year in Cambodia can rip apart your heart and soul (and maybe knee) and stitch it back haphazardly, like a bad copy of a Russian-market dress. Oddly, upon closer inspection, the stitching is stronger. The experience makes you stronger. Even on a morning when you're completely drained and find yourself on the back of a moto, knowing that if something happens that's it-- you don't have the energy to jump off-- at least you're comforted by the one truth you know: you have lived. An experience in a foreign place makes every feeling, thought and emotion surface at odd times and then completely empties you out. Only then, when you're emptied out, feeling nothing, confused by what is the real and unreal, will you know. You'll be walking in the heated dream that is South East Asia and from somewhere within, a memory of a cold breeze will make you shiver and whisper that it doesn't matter.
We choose what we want to live and what we want to be real.
Very well said!
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