What Happened in Bangkok

when my world ruptured, and everything crashed in

It rained in Bangkok that Sunday. Halfway through my Skytrain trip, thunder shook the rails, and the drops were like fists. I stood with my face to the glass, looking down on the street – heavy traffic slick on the pavement – and the air changed. This was just before I saw her again, before the tears – déjà vu of the rain.

We flew to Bangkok the week before, traveling as a group to meet Peter and his wife Patricia, both expats. Patricia threaded us through streets – past vendors, soups in small plastic bags with the top knotted, and noodles, delicious noodles – and she talked like she understood the way of the world. There were ten of us; my teammates were my friends, one especially. Zedd told me three times over the previous year that he wanted to be with me. I felt his desire when he lingered, when he filled a room with his expectation. But I said no to him three times. I couldn’t give him what he gave me. I wanted love to mean something other than romance. Still we traveled, and he lingered close. 

We drove to Thailand from Cambodia. Before Cambodia we visited South Korea – all of us: our leaders, their three young children, and five of us in our twenties. We met with NGOs, humanitarian groups, and couples like Peter and Patricia. In Korea, we attended a church of 10,000 congregants. We ate pork fat, bulgogi, and “American pizza” smothered with mayonnaise, potatoes and thin, pale hot dogs. On Jeju Island – south of Korea’s mainland – we walked under evening snowfall on a deserted highway, newly built. We had four lanes to ourselves at dusk, and while we walked, the night itself felt foreign.

Each place added to my sense of expectation. I knew that something might happen; I needed something to happen. I didn’t know what. The three-nation trip came on the heels of 2012, a year I didn’t yet understand. I spent much of 2012 abroad, but by Thanksgiving, I’d reached a pivot point, bruised into reckoning with the codependent veins of my childhood, my habit of clutching “closeness.” I retreated to my childhood home; I wrote; I walked in the mornings when the trees were still wet. I felt quieter inside than I had in years – at the edge of an old version of me, the silent space before the new. 

The New Year came – 2013 – and I received my invitation for the trip. I packed and flew away, hoping I might get out beyond my centripatal self. I lived too much in my head; introspection could cripple me. I wondered if Korea, Cambodia, and Thailand might change that. 

Cambodian mornings were hot even at sunrise, so during our two weeks there, I woke early to run. I emerged from my room one morning, and Zedd was waiting, nervous. He asked if we could talk before I ran. I agreed, and while we walked the dirt road – scooters brushing by – he told me he’d been up the night before and had something to say. I braced for talk of marriage, or some equally frightening topic. But it wasn’t that. He just said he’d sat awake the night before, praying for friends, praying for me, and he had to tell me:

“You’re free from self-examination.”

It struck me square in the gut. I don’t know how he knew I needed that. But I needed that. His words weren’t his opinion; it felt like they came through him, and I latched on. If I was - or could be - free from nitpicking myself, maybe I could reach something beyond me. I craved that. A bigness that could connect, heal. Outside of me. I thanked Zedd and ran through Battambang – hoping to God I’d find my way to something beyond my own head. 

A few days later, we drove to Bangkok and walked the streets with Patricia. She explained the Red Light district and the women and children trapped in sex slavery. It was jarring, surreal. Then we were tourists again: I tried coconut crepes, explored cavernous malls, and shopped for clothes. The juxtaposition was bizarre. 

On one of our tourist days, our group took the Skytrain – an elevated city train, soaring over Bangkok. We rode half the day then exited at our usual stop. I stepped off the train just behind Zedd, and when we looked up, the throng of passengers parted. We both gasped. Zedd’s eyes dropped immediately. I stepped back.

We’d both seen her. 

Seated on the floor, against the wall of the station was a woman. She was shocking, horrific. I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that, but I’d never seen her condition. I didn’t know it was possible. She looked like a product of CGI, something from a horror film. I don’t know how else to say it. Thick drooping lobes of fatty tissue extended from her face into her lap. She had no eyes, nose, or mouth. Not that I could see. There was only the long, thick skin – melting from her face down to her crossed legs. She held a cup with a few Thai Baht in it - paper and coins. I hated my reaction: I shuddered first and only later thought of her suffering, her humanity. Zedd shuddered too. He looked at me briefly, eyes wide. Then we turned and followed the group. I knew I’d done the wrong thing – gasping, looking away. But we spent the evening at our hotel, ate a team dinner, and moved on.

The following day, Patricia and Peter took us to the office of an NGO assisting women rescued from sex slavery. We met the women, and all I could do was listen and observe, from my opposite experience – protected, privileged. The world felt lopsided.

By Sunday, our last full day in Thailand, I felt some sort of anxiety, or maybe urgency. I woke and decided I’d play hooky. Our group had a packed schedule for the day, more meetings and visits, but I thought of Zedd’s phrase and felt sure that something beyond me might be waiting if I rode the Skytrain alone to find it. Maybe I wanted a chance to do it right.

I spoke with the leaders of my group – both gracious – and they gave me permission to wander. So I slipped away from our hotel, and rode the train without a plan. My urgency persisted. God, need, and desire pulled me onward, to meet something more vital than myself. But halfway through my Skytrain day, I’d been most everywhere, and I still didn’t know why. I stood with my face to the glass, looking down on the street – heavy traffic slick on the pavement – and the air changed. Thunder shook the rails, and the drops were like fists. Bangkok shuddered under the clouds. 

I turned, got back on the train, and rode one stop further – a brand new stop. The last on the route.

The doors slid open, and when I stepped out, I saw her – the woman with the skin. Was it all for her? I felt it. The trip could be – it should be – for her? It seemed like a soft, strange fate. I hesitated: but what to do? I pulled several Baht from my pocket and walked toward her. I could give her money. I could do that, and it was something. Maybe I could say a blessing too. As I stooped down to put the money in her cup, so close to her - to a lived experience I couldn’t imagine - I sensed again how lopsided the world is. Money’s not enough on its own. She couldn’t see me. She couldn’t see anyone.

So I dropped the money in her cup and stretched both my hands out to touch hers. 

And that was the explosion.

Never before and never again have I felt that.

Pardon my timidity in sharing, but it was a rupture in my being, and words are frail for it -

Thunder shook my ribs when she squeezed my hands. I staggered at the warmth of her skin, the current that passed through them. And I do mean a current. Some painless but mighty shockwave - electrical surges - moved between us. This is hard to believe. This is what happened. I fell back to a seated position, I could scarcely move, and I began to cry - hot, gulping tears - not of sadness, but of awe. My body buzzed wild as if psychedelics had ripped the pale veneer off the world, but I’d taken no substance.

This rupture flipped my mind, my spirit.

In a flash, I felt that the whole world till now has been wrong, that it’s lopsided, yes, but lopsided in its favor, its Love, for the weak, the suffering. My throat knotted. I felt that the meek really ought to inherit the earth, and that I must serve them not because they’re less fortunate, but because they are rightful heirs of all of the strength that crowns suffering. 

I was humbled flat on that pavement, and I was nothing, and this was everything, and we are loved.

I touched her hands, flooded with the Love passing through her, and I repented of my arrogance. I felt poor, small, wide open. Money wasn’t enough on its own. My assumptions were appalling. Here was a woman who should teach me, and here was a woman who’d lived each day in a certain courage I couldn’t conceive. I sat as a heap of a woman, pressed under a tidal wave of grace I cannot - still - explain, and tears fell from my eyes, a heartbreaking joy, matching the sky. 

This was beyond me.