tears, that vietnamese cheer of encouragement when you catch a wave, hanoi street food, therapy. traveling with katie, farewelling katie, haplessly dragged into nasty currents and drama.

accepting that the problem isn’t me.

new nepal vlogs

3 passes + ebc | kathmandu—khongma la

3 passes + ebc | ebc—gokyo

Monthly Mood: Feeling Feelings

in october and november i backpacked vietnam with my best friend and on the day she flew out i watched her be “forgiven” for overstaying her visa by one day as the immigration official slid her back her $52-penalty.

we sat at highlands in the hanoi airport, too sleep-deprived from late-night marathoning anthony bourdain to cry.

we’d already cried a few days prior, wallowing in our own pity after surviving the party tour of the hà giang loop that we’d unintentionally gotten involved in. the experience of jasmine tours can only be described as traumatic and unethical.

we’d also eaten our body weight in bún chả, shared snails twice, and discovered that katie’s top vietnamese dish after one month of overeating was bánh đúc nóng tucked at the end of a crusty alleyway.

we’d flown into hà nội in from đà nẵng on november first. we booked flights specifically so that i could take her with me as my free guest to the lounge, only to find out at the airport that no lounge in the domestic terminal accepted my priority pass—a rare occurrence that hadn’t happened in years.

out of heartbreak and my belligerent refusal to eat vietnamese street food at the airport hours before landing in the best streets of vietnamese street food, we sit down at burger king.

it might be the only time in the last decade that i had bk. the absurdity of the moment quickly consoles our hurt feelings.

on our final night together katie is sent into hysterics when my cocktail arrives with headphones plugged into a plate that looks more like a museum exhibition than anything else. she has to take a moment in the ladies’ room to stop laughing.

i stayed a couple more nights in hanoi, smashing back bánh cuốn and papaya and cốm.

i meet with my well-educated vietnamese friend. she has boundaries. she has experienced more of the world and of life than most.

when the topic of sexual assault from a surfer arises over a pot of medicinal tea, she interprets my tale as,

a group of idiot countryside vietnamese boys saw an american by herself and played yet another round of Who Will Fuck Her First? their favorite game with foreign women. because they knew one of them would. they just had to see would be first.

my friend’s interpretation sent me into a spiral of anxiety and loneliness.

nobody would fuck her.

one would use physical force and sexual violence. and would not stop until she said the word “rape” out loud.

eight months later, the american girl is still working on processing what actually happened. how she is not the problem. how she did not do anything wrong. how she could not have done anything differently or “better.”

the american girl just wanted to surf in peace.

i speak to my therapist about this and she supports my idea to file a police report. she tells me what i already know: it is never too late to press charges.

decades can pass, and you still have the right to tell your story.

i wouldn’t file a police report for the boy to get punished, or with any expectation that the police here would give a flying fuck about me.

i’d do it for me.

i got dragged into a weird night of unwanted sexual touching that i didn’t ask for. the thing to do is to file a report. for the sake of doing my best to look after myself.

if i had a daughter and this happened to her, i would file a police report for her.

after a trauma some people say “i should have done something, i don’t know what it was, but i should have.” a more reasonable standard to live up to is to ask yourself “what would i expect from a friend if they went through a similar situation?”
—psychology tools, before i blame myself and feel guilty

i depart hanoi because i miss my little home so much. i go straight from deplaning to my local beach break and have a fine time long boarding.

sandy, salty, and with the scent of puppies on me, i hitchhike home. i get an offer on a scooter, my huge backpack containing all my travel shit strapped to me.

i went through a lot of cries (personal and considering the palestine conflict) and loneliness in november.

once home, reality hits like a brick. the pile of tasks after a vacation. questioning and doubting the next direction of my life / creative energy.

at the same time as i get back, my local reef break starts working. that means weather and ocean conditions have changed enough to bring surfable waves back to this spot. it’s the start of the season.

that spot makes me feel like i don’t know anything. i lose all my confidence and self-esteem when i try.

it seems that i keep sizing up my board. that my wipeouts are toning my muscles more than my surfing is.

i sit there for numerous hours, confused, scared of reef and sea urchins after sri lanka, struggling, figuring it out just a little bit more with each additional day.

it doesn’t help that sexual-assault-boy is often inches away from me in the take-off zone.

sometimes i feel like i surf in pieces.

when google helped me realize in july that it was assault and i stopped denying that we were never friends, i stopped using sexual-assault-boy’s surf shop.

i was introduced by a local friend to another surfer with an “ugly face but beautiful heart,” as opposed to her opposite description of the boy mentioned above.

this new guy rented me surfboards.

in late november he pushed to exchange english lessons for surf lessons with me. but after consistent weird behavior and concerning messages i’d received in september, i got cold feet.

he’d also been mansplaining me some things about surfing, which makes my blood boil.

my phone was always getting blown up with texts, but to my face, he’d act like everything was okay and be too scared to speak to me.

this boy’s excuse has always been that his “english is not good” but it is clear that the problems are beyond any language barrier.

something didn’t feel right.

my vietnamese girlfriends interpret ugly-face-but-beautiful-heart’s mystic, angsty texts as him thinking we have something, or him being in love with me, which i myself doubt and pray to be not true.

i just want to surf in peace.

every event has many contributing factors but we have a tendency to magnify our own role. consider the victim of abuse who blames herself for not disclosing the abuse. other factors she is failing to consider include: caregivers for failing to protect her, systems around her for failing to notice what was happening, police for failing to catch a criminal, and most importantly the perpetrator for choosing to abuse.

—psychology tools, before i blame myself and feel guilty

hours after ugly-face-but-beautiful-heart tells me he wants to give me a surf lesson that afternoon (bold of him to assume i wanted to learn from him) he’s all weird and dramatic over text. again.

he asks if i often see a neurologist since he doesn’t know if i’m sick but maybe a doctor does, immediately followed by,

“how many boyfriends have you had before?”

i feel sick in the stomach and immediately stop engaging. for good. within days i move my board out of his shop, pay off my tab, and simply state that i will not read or respond to his messages anymore.

i really avoid blocking people no matter how much i dislike them. but a continuous bombardment of messages (recalled, not recalled), floating in bold to the top of my feed, is stressful.

i even got an email with a preview saying “we need to clarify you suspecting us of using your board” which i sent straight to spam, unread.

when i’d taken my board out of ugly-face-but-beautiful-heart’s shop, i’d noticed a leash plug on my board that wasn’t mine and scratches that i didn’t remember. combined with the fact that i had almost been given someone else’s personal board as a rental in the past, i confronted this boy.

“why is there a leash plug on my board?”

he didn’t know and asked to see it.

instead i was more direct and asked,

“did someone use my board?”

“no, i always make sure nobody uses your board.”

“okay,” i said as i walked away.

there is no me suspecting anything. there is no me caring anymore if someone used or didn’t use my board.

but i’m getting texts, missed calls, and an EMAIL after i have given my best effort at closure.

as if i have all the time in the world to baby his delusions.

“we need to?”

excuse me?

WE NEED?

i don’t need to do anything.

i don’t need to do shit.

leave me the fuck alone.

i vent to my friends. i vent to my therapist.

i buy my own longboard. i make my own deal with a hotel to store my board at the beach, for a premium price, just to stay distant from sexual-assault-boy storing all his boards at the cheaper option.

in the end both beautiful-face-but-ugly-heart and ugly-face-but-beautiful-heart are not normal. they are not okay. they don’t love themselves. they are not happy.

they are fake. they are cowards.

they are sick. they are broken.

i never played games with either of them. i never asked for special treatment. and i am not the only one in the community who had to burn bridges with them.

but i am certainly the only one in the community who is a woman, who is confident, who is financially independent (for nine years) and debt-free, who has a university degree, who is trilingual, who lives and surfs on her own, who is young, and who knows that whatever a man can do, she can do too, and better.

and

i love them both,

as i love everybody.

…surfing reconnects us to who we really are. this is all the more reason to keep surfing. life is good. surfing reminds us of how good life is.

—gerry lopez, surf is where we find it

on afternoons when conditions are small and those 20-something, testosterone-jacked vietnamese beach boys stay home, the lineup is uncrowded and supportive and

i surf in peace.

obsessions

love wellness sparkle fiber
hum flatter me digestive enzymes
eating whatever i want
9’2 single fin
independence
gerry lopez
peppermint tea
homemade decaf vanilla almond-cashew-coconut milk latte
new zealand blueberries
russian surf schools
not wasting my time on toxic humans
7’9 tri fin
t bros 85% dark choccy
betterhelp
cốm
bún chả hà nội
bún đậu mắm tôm
anthony bourdain
woongjin nurungji tea
cháo ấu tẩu
cháo vịt
cốm

currently reading:

a cook’s tour by anthony bourdain

surf is where you find it by gerry lopez

links on stuff i wish they taught in every school

• what is sexual assault?

• vietnam sexual and domestic violence hotlines

• sexual assault- wikipedia

• sexual assault- rape, abuse, & incest national network

• sexual assault- cambridge dictionary

• preventing sexual violence- cdc

Every 68 seconds another American is sexually assaulted. 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (14.8% completed, 2.8% attempted).

—rainn.org

 

Sexual assault is never okay. If it happens to you, is not your fault. There is nothing you need to do because you are not the problem.

If you are sexually assaulted, consider calling your national hotline or filing a police report at the station closest to the incident.

If you are sexually assaulted abroad, consider calling your closest embassy, calling the national hotline and hotlines from your home country, or filing a police report at the station closest to the incident.

Previous Monthly Mood: Moody

Explore my full archive of Vietnam and Monthly Moods.

Learn more about this round-the-world solo trip.