I was down and out. I did not want to die, but I did not want to live either. I had just dried up after years of alcoholic drinking. My career was in the toilet. My immediate and extended family had stopped speaking to me. Most of them still don’t.
At 37, my spark was gone. I did not feel curious about the future or interested in becoming anything else. Love seemed like a young person’s illusion, a chemical trick dressed up as meaning. People settled. They used each other. That was the deal. I believed only the young fell in love, because only they were still naive enough.
There was no danger of me drinking again. That part was over. But there was also nothing left for me in the United States. I was scrambling for enough money just to stay afloat. I was tired of counting every dollar and calling it a life.
I did not go to Cambodia to find myself. I went because I could afford to exist there. Siem Reap was cheap, quiet enough, and far away from the life I had already failed at. That was the appeal.
I rented a small apartment and kept my head down. I was not trying to build a new life; I was trying to reduce the old one to something manageable.
