Mikes Thoughts

friendships fading away

Since I got back to Asia in 2022 I believed that some people would just be there. Mostly Khmer and Vietnamese people I was fortunate to meet and enjoy time with. AV was one of the Khmer people I sought out when I first returned. And she found me. I remember her text or email telling me she saw me walking along riverside in Phnom Penh. We made plans to meet for coffee. We talked a long time. It felt like nothing had changed with her yet a lot had. She has this look of internal power and control beneath a beautiful exterior. I think personally she is the most beautiful Khmer woman I have met. Her voice is this warm yet earthy thing which I enjoy just listening to. Her laugh this catchy and sensuous thing from the uncontrolled depths. We’ve been friends since 2018. Through some rough years and some distance. But it was never more. She was this friend that I just enjoyed without some concern about having a sexual relationship with.

Now it feels like things have been stretched. She won’t message me for fear of stoking jealousy with my wife. That hurts.

Then there’s this core group of Vietnamese people in Hanoi. We met so often and shared dinners and coffee. Beer and talking. Chinh and her husband Vu were these fun, different, socially entertaining friends I could always just message. Ask to meet. Tu and Ming always would want to get together. So we just went maybe monthly. It has dawned on me that stopped in 2021 when I left Vietnam. It’s like the going with no sense of returning ripped the wires off that. They dangled with no connections. No spark. And soon replaced by nothing.

Others have come and gone. More have gone than showed up and I found most of the barang people I wanted nothing to do with. I always looked at someone and listened. Listened to the quiet voice of my conscience. Acted with what I heard. It’s meant people have never come along at the pace others depart.

This is me getting old

I think aging means recalibration of our lives. We’re faced with lesser moments and perhaps we want more quality in them. Like why do things with the quantity of people I see and never wish more from. Instead wheat and chaff get done. People go. Feeling and beliefs remain. I’ve never felt wrong with how I’ve done things. There is no wrong or right. There is me. Getting old. Finding I am not patient with the effort of finding people sometimes or not liking the ones choice or chance have given me.

So it’s taken awhile to sort out now what it is I want. Do I want more friendships. Want to find another R to talk to. Yes and no. I don’t particularly want thousands of them. Quantity never wins out. Quality sometimes is less but we settle. Accept. And they probably accept us too. It’s really daunting in Cambodia I think. People that retire here can find YouTube bloggers to tell them how to live. What to find. All the reasons. Soon though we can see the other end of things.

Getting old or past it. I can’t imagine being elsewhere but life is not quite how all the expats make it. And that’s ok. We all find our paradise and hell. My mom would say we all find our hell on earth. But Cambodia is more than that. Always. It gave me something I thought to never have again. But it all comes with a price tag. And that, I think, is the sense of disappearing family. Ed was right. One thing comes up. Another may depart.