Thoughts and Prayers, Highs and Lows and Pleeeese… Someone Throw Me a Life Jacket FFS?? 🛟🤯

Ugggggggg… What a freaking month. I’ve been trying to process the heap of total crap news which keeps getting dumped on my head and heart these past few weeks, and I’m really struggling to wrap my head around all of it. It’s A LOT. So much loss. More that I can manage honestly ATM. Some of it is far too personal to publicly divulge on my blog, but involves the loss of my health, the loss of my primary source of income, through no fault of my own, the loss of someone I considered my closest friend here, who out of the blue decided he no longer wishes to speak to me, and more…

A LOT OF LOSS… 😢

You take the good with the bad right? And there has been lots of good… But the rest, I will try and piece together in stream of consciousness….

In the past 3 days, I lost 2 friends.

One, a relatively new friend, and professional colleague… a pillar of my culinary community in Vietnam, whom I had the privilege to get to know through my job here as Senior Editor of Epicure Vietnam Magazine. Another, my childhood crush of 45 years… the eldest son of my parents’ best friends. Every single holiday spent together growing up. We would hang out every time he visited Los Angeles from Florida, and wrote to one another other often on FB, just to say hi and catch up. Both wonderful, talented, good and kind men, tragically taken from earth far too soon…

Everything is supposed to come in 3s right??? Or so they say… I shutter to think who, or what, will be next… I’m feeling anxious to leave the confines of my apartment right now. Agoraphobic. I have to take a breath before checking Social Media, or look at my messaging apps. I’m completely numb… 😔

In addition, I moved my life to Saigon to be with my family, who had moved here nearly a year prior to my arrival on February 20th, 2020. I was only supposed to stay a month, to sort out my head, and drum up the courage to finally ask for a divorce from my now ex-husband. It was always supposed to be temporary… but low and behold, 3.5 years later, due to a long list of circumstances, including a global pandemic, I’m still here… Very happy in my reinvention, and new life in Southeast Asia, but it was never my dream to live here. It was my sister’s… and 3 days ago, she, my nephew Wolf, and their beloved dog, my baby Sienna, left to join my brother-in-law Gregg, their 2nd son Gustav, and two dogs Wicket & Jelly in their new home and life in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

And, I’m staying here…

I’m praying that my family’s moving back to the USA counts as the 3rd departure?? But, I kinda doubt it…

And… how was your week?