Category: Grief, Life, Love
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Germany & Me: Getting Back with Your Ex
When I moved to Germany a year ago, I was equal parts nervous and excited. Nervous because I was leaving the friends and community that I’d made in Portugal, starting a new job, and, for the first time, moving with a partner rather than moving alone. (Although that last part doesn’t seem like something to…
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Writing, Wrap Ups, and The Thing
It’s been almost six months since I posted on this blog. And it’s been even longer than that since I tried to write something. When I say “write,” I mean really write. My own writing, not just the writing I get paid to do. In February of last year, my writing motivation took a huge…
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Health and Language Barriers during COVID
On a gloomy August morning, I walked to a public Portuguese clinic armed with my EU residency card, a screenshot of Portuguese Immigration saying my expired card had been temporarily extended, and a letter from Finanças (the Portuguese IRS) confirming my third address change in one year. My purse held prescriptions for several different antibiotics. I…
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Dating in Bangkok and Portugal: From Salsa to Guacamole
When friends back in Asia ask me what the dating scene is like in Portugal, I don’t know what to say. Fine? Active? Normal? It’s not that I don’t see a difference between dates in Bangkok and dates in Porto–I definitely do. It’s more that I didn’t know how to describe it. Then a friend posted…
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Traveling to Embrace Loss
When people asked why I was going to Germany for five days in late November, I had a few standard replies: I’m going to see where I used to live; I just want to go to a country where I speak the language; cheap tickets. I only told a select few the truth: I was going…
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When a Gaslighter Improves Your Standards
There are many things to regret about dating a gaslighter. You regret being naive, you regret selling yourself short, you regret the years you probably took off your life from the stress of someone continually making you question your own mind. When I first met the Gaslighter, I was swept off my feet. He was…
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An Anniversary
Last night at 4:30 a.m. I sat in the back of an Uber listening to my date talk about the differences between football and futsal. He held my hand, tracing swirls between my fingers and palm. It was our fifth or sixth date. We’d just spent the evening in downtown Porto grabbing drinks and dancing…
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Leaving Bangkok: Thank You, Next
Last week I moved from Bangkok, Thailand to Porto, Portugal. This marks the 19th move of my life, a number which includes moving state-to-state, country-to-country, and just from one neighbourhood to the next (I only did that once; every other time I’ve at least moved out of state). Each move is relatively the same: right…
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Welcoming 2019 with Tenacity
For the past few years I’ve listened to friends choose ‘anchor words,’ which they use to ground themselves for the New Year. They choose words like “courage” to remind them each month to be brave, or “persistent” to encourage them to strive for what they want. Since being surrounded by wordsmiths in graduate school I’ve…
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Broken Hearts and the Power of Women on the River Kwai
The blue destination dot on Google Maps seemed far away as my two friends and I crawled out of the minibus at the Kanchanaburi bus station. It was nearing 8 p.m. We’d left Bangkok around 4:30 p.m. The driver shut the door and drove off, leaving us standing dumbly in the street. My two friends,…
The Wandering Writer 