🕯️🌊🌙 bug reflections... 🪞🌠🛁
looking back on the past few months of my life... thailand to uk move and grief jouneys
If Bug Collections was the sun, then Bug Reflections would be the moon. A deeper and more insightful side of the same coin.
Feel free to skip if it’s not your thing, this is more of a personal deep dive into my life and mind, rather than a playful creative letter. But I want to share all of me, so count these newsletters as a less frequent addition to Ladybug Dreamworld.
My family keeps asking me what I miss most about Thailand and, other than cheap food and my scrappy little motorbike, I haven’t really been able to give them much of an answer. I think that’s because I only really started to miss Thailand last week, around the two month mark, so I’m still working on a way to conceptualise my feelings.
When my cat passed away it took me 7 weeks to finally get used to her absence in my house. I was no where near pain free, but it now made sense to me that she wasn’t there. So my autistic brain took this information and decided it would take the same amount of time to stop missing Thailand and feel settled in England after my move. Little did I realise, it would be the other way around. I was close with the time frame, but by taking 7 weeks to settle into my new environment, my brain wasn’t able to begin grieving what it had lost.
So now the time has passed and the grief is beginning to seep in, but this isn’t a bad thing, I’m a sucker for some melancholy nostalgia. I love to reminisce, I love to feel my heart yearn and to cry for what I once loved and held dear. I love to write about it and get lost in the waves of beauty that my mind has held on to, so I can relive it once more.
The last time I left Thailand I was much younger and it broke my heart wide open. I could barely function with the loss, my sole purpose was finding myself back there. This time is more gentle, I said goodbye and I chose to start a new life. While I was there I began to practice keeping the moments that I loved so I could access them later, when I was far away. When I rode my bike with my favourite music through the mountains, when I saw a flock of birds dance together across the sunset stained sky, or when I just sat on the steps outside my house and tended to my plants, I would imagine that feeling of love and let it seep into my bones. Now, whenever I feel lost or too far from that version of myself, I imagine taking a little of that feeling from inside my arms or legs or ribs and letting it fill my body. I’m there again.
So it’s taken me two months of being away to begin to miss Thailand. Like MISS miss it. Like I can feel my heart being slowly but forcefully yanked up through my throat when I start to think of those roads I once knew. Leaving the house in just a t shirt and pyjama shorts, lacing up my converse on the steps and walking slowly, blissfully past the rice fields. A gentle breeze sometimes brushed through my hair, but the warmth on my skin never fell away. I would be carried through those little roads and lanes, down muddy paths and across the stones leading to the river. And there I would sit, admiring all the shapes and colours of the rocks that the water created and left for me on it’s shore. Dust on my shoes and dirt under my nails, knots in my hair and sweat deep in the fabric of my clothes. Freedom. Chaos. Delight. Ease.
Walking through the park in England sometimes feels like a quest for isolation. I’m aware it’s a public space, but sometimes I arrive at the gates and feel my heart sink when I see other people wandering it’s paths. Some days I just wish to be invisible, I don’t have energy for facial expressions as I walk past another person, for the hyper awareness of my clothes, my walk, my face, my everything, that oh-so-delightfully comes with the autistic experience. I want to be without perception, like the ants in the grass or the squirrels in the trees.
When I would walk through the country fields and down by the rivers in Pai there wasn’t a person in sight. Maybe a farmer or a fisherman, but they weren’t too interested in me. I was free to just exist. To spread my arms and twirl around, absorbing the delights that sprung from the sunset kissed mountains. Free to nestle myself down by the water, admiring the rocks and placing my hands in the current to feel that connection. Propping my little camera on a ledge to document it all without any fear of being seen. That’s what I miss the most about Thailand, the freedom to just exist.
It's funny, I left my home country with an intense longing to find community and I returned with the desire to just be by myself. A lot happened in those years, but the clearest part to me is the steady pipeline of being surrounded by people to being completely alone. From working and living in a hostel, to living with friends, to living alone but being in a relationship, to being single but living with my cat, to being ALONE.
And that last part is where I began to thrive. ‘Thrive’ may be a confusing term for a period of time where I was all encompassed by the grief that came with the death of my beloved cat, Chicken, and also correlated with a sudden dip in my health. I was isolated and housebound for a lot of it, but I swear I physically felt my brain begin to expand. My world may have seemed small, but that was what is was, MY world. I stopped trying so hard to be a part of the world around me, and I just came inwards, and from that I began to expand outwards.
It sounds weird, I know, but this is where Ladybug Dreamworld was born. A world I could enclose myself in, begin to collect everything that made me feel alive, or safe, or thoughtful. Where I could wander the streets slowly, at my own pace, absorbing as much as I could. Where I could allow myself grace to just be as I was, no pressure to earn money or socialise or promote my business or engage with anything outside myself. My grief and my chronic illness gave me permission to thrive in ways I never knew were possible. I was creating art, I was writing, drawing, making, I was taking in more information than ever before, I was INSPIRED.
This, of course, isn’t a sustainable way of living, but it was a break from life that I so needed. And now it's something I can dip in and out of whenever I need to. I can tell my family to ignore me for a day, I can turn off my phone and I can just sink into myself, my world. I think I used to do this a lot as a child, and it's something I lost when I began to look outside myself for fun or happiness or even just quick dopamine hits.
Today i’m sat up on a hill in England, in an enclosed area of the park. The fence had fallen down, so I could walk through freely, but with the knowledge that no one would be there. I’m looking down at a pond and the people stood admiring the birds, some with their binoculars. From where I’m sitting it almost looks like they are all looking and pointing at me, even though I took great effort to find a spot no one would be, I’ve somehow found myself in line with the main attraction. I’m thinking about how glad I am I stopped smoking weed a couple years ago, because this would be a perfect recipe for stoned paranoia.
I just saw a flock of bright green parakeets fly together and I watched the people below watching them too. And then a flock of ducks flying too! I felt my heart soar and tears spring to my eyes just like it did over and over in the Thai country side. I’m realising that I can feel like this anywhere I go, even if I have to share it with strangers every now and again.
While I've been writing this, and walking through the park pondering it all, I've been listening to my playlist called night walks. It's perfect for melancholy nostalgia. Originally I created it for walking in the city under the orange glow of the street lamps, seeing the moon in the distance and occasionally glancing through people’s windows if they left their curtains open. But it works for days like this too.
Thank you for reading what was basically an extended and drawn out journal entry. I just wrote this for myself really, but sharing these experiences makes it all feel a little more real. I've been enclosed in my bubble a long time, and while I do intend to remain there, I’d like to invite some people in too.
All my love,
Ladybug <3
Beautifully written, heartfelt and honest. I’m glad you find such a cathartic way to process all you are going through xxx
Ahh... There is so. so much to think about in this content that it leaves me realising how many of us don't allow adequate time for peaceful contentment or sad rumination. On the other hand, so much time for contemplation does not serve everybody; we are all different and what strikes me is that you have identified your need for that personal time, space and thought. Everything is temporary and I hope the grief and loss you feel right now dispels into warm nostalgia and new, welcoming, opportunity. Virtual hugs xx