Got here, and getting there

Hey ho – I’m in Vietnam, exciting huh? Packed well, all the night before of course, partly before and partly after a lovely dinner with my housemates, and a DVD too. I like taking a small suitcase, it gets full quicker and means I can stop packing sooner and get to bed. Left early on a misty morning, feeling warm and cosy about home, feeling like it is a home.

Was also a bit tired when leaving, accumulated angst from the weekend I think. A close rellie from my home town came to stay, someone I have always considered myself generally liking, from a comfortable distance. Up close and personal this weekend I thought her particularly superficial, judging everyone on how they look and pandering after the trimmings of affluence, self-serving, with a loose grip on ‘reality’ and a tendancy to spin long winded drunken stories casting herself in a favourable, if rather fictitious, light. In particular I found her attitudes to our shared family past particularly difficult to swallow. Without going into dreary details, let’s just say that my mother came from an abusive and erratic family, and that, as is often the case with large families where abuse, mental illness and other things that mini series are made about have played a role, the siblings are fractured, competitive, grappling with guilt and blame and seeking the empathy they never had, but paradoxically not able to give it because they never got it and are still waiting. – sigh – Anyway, her particular brand of sibling rivalry came out and was directed at my mother , a few snide comments about my little brother, and they really gave me the shits. I didn’t say anything, because I’m still learning how to speak up around my family stuff* , but for one of the first times ever I actually felt angry, rather than just smoothing over and avoiding. Traditionally I am the quiet one who doesn’t take offense or sides and just tries to ignore all the talk – read, doesn’t let herself respond, even when it causes a strong emotional response. I guess the timing of just starting to see a counsellor do some family of origin work and then having one of the family members who is right in the middle of it all come stay, was fairly volatile. I think I’m starting to have a very strong emotional response to it all, and whoops, it might be coming out.

[As an aside, it is a hard one to grapple with, isn’t it, being related to people who don’t treat well the other people you care about. I am musing on how much love relies on approving of other people’s behaviour (or not), how much you can enjoy spending time with someone who speaks with no respect at all about someone you care about, and whether you can enjoy spending time with people who don’t recognize things that have happened in the past or who have different allegiances in the whole messy, um, mess.]

So after my 13 hour flight and checking in like a zombie, sleeping like the dead, I did a complete bunker down yesterday and literally did not leave the hotel. All day. Allllll day. Why? Well, I was working, so basically didn’t leave my desk, except when Housekeeping rang me and asked me to leave so they could do my room! Then I went downstairs to drink tea and work some more. Hot though, I can tell from in here, and it was hot yesterday as we landed in Ho Chi Minh City, hot and wet like a breath out. I know this probably seems terribly unadventurous, but there will be time enough for fast walking along precarious footpaths and sweaty cab rides to meetings, coffees in cafes, and lots of talking and planning and thinking later in the week, so for now, it’s a gentle, tissue box surrounded landing, getting used to being away and to the honking and to the idea of being here as a professional, as a westerner, as someone wealthy in a fancy hotel – all weird roles to be thrust in, all a little uncomfortable, but, like ill fitting shoes or an itchy suit, you can acclimatise, if you give it some time.

Today, day 2, I am also working hard and having bouts of great energy and complete lethargy. I think I am getting my mid afternoon slump at lunchtime, which is weird. Oh body clock, sorry to baffle you with timezone changes.

Exotic tales of warm climes and so on when I actually leave the hotel.

*Partly because I've just been in denial, as I said to the counsellor dude, let's call him Bob 'I don't talk about it because I don't want to come from a fucked up family, it sounds like something from Days of our Lives' and I certainly don't want other people to think they can wade right in and talk about stuff that is quite personal any old time just because I've mentioned it once, or to smugly assume that I am defined by this and only this experience, when of course, there is much more than our family experience and their family experience that make us who we are, and even that experience gives us gifts as well as burdens, right? Right? Maybe.