Back with another update after almost a month! I really keep procrastinating with these, but it’s actually very difficult for me to journal because I’m usually in denial about, uh, everything happening in my life, LOL.
Anyways! Keep reading for updates on my mental health (what’s new), my internship while abroad, and uhh just general thoughts on being enough!
Even though it seems like I’m being very open about my study abroad experiences, I can tell you that I am very much still holding back on a lot of thoughts I still want to share. Some of them, I only want to share with my good friends who I know can hold my vulnerability and support me through it. But other thoughts I withhold because I’m scared of certain people seeing my posts, and that is my family.
I’ve never been open with my family about anything. And when I talk about my family, I mostly mean my older relatives (parents, aunts, uncles), but sometimes I mean my younger relatives too. For most of them who I don’t have on social media, they know about 1/10 of who I truly am. My family doesn’t know how much I value social justice. They don’t know that I’m queer. Out of my whole family, only my brothers and like one or two relatives probably know. Only those same relatives know that I have depression and anxiety, and the extents of my mental health. And they definitely do not know about my dating life. Heck, they don’t even know about my second major.
To most of my family, they probably think of me as the black sheep of the family because I lift weights, don’t dress feminine all the time (or too feminine sometimes with revealing clothes), study a major whose name they don’t understand, and am extroverted. So you can only imagine how hard it is for me to share my study abroad experience with them, let alone share it openly on a website that I can’t restrict their viewing like with Instagram/Facebook. Literally the only pictures I send my parents of my study abroad experience are of food, my room, or my campus, sometimes with me in the pictures. I hate living this double life where I try to maintain a certain filtered image for my family so that they’ll accept me but also not compromise my own sense of self.
Before I came to Thailand, I was still struggling to accept the distance between me and my family. I don’t really have any control over how they’ll understand or not understand me. Now it’s even harder to accept that. I left home for 5 months and they don’t even really understand why. I feel bad and I so desperately want to tell them everything, but I know that even if I tell them a sliver of what they don’t know about me, they wouldn’t receive it well. So for my own preservation and well-being, I don’t tell them. But that doesn’t mean holding that back from doesn’t hurt me still. I feel like a dam ready to crack and spill all my contents at any moment.
So I’ll still continue to be transparent like I always try to be in these Medium posts, but I just want it to be known how difficult it is for me to do so. Don’t mistake this as me feeling pressured to share all the details about my life while abroad. Although I do feel this pressure, I genuinely want to share my life and thoughts while abroad with friends who care enough to read these posts.
Anyways. That was a long sort of preface.
I haven’t talked much about my internship here in Thailand! But I have one! LOL. So I intern with a nonprofit organization called People Serving People Foundation, or PSPF. They serve mainly South Asian and Southeast Asian urban refugees who live in Bangkok by providing legal services and some financial support (which I’ll explain later). I personally work mostly with Hmong folks, but there are also Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Vietnamese refugees. Using photography, I create social media content to establish greater visibility of the organization. Under PSPF, there’s an organization called CHAMALiiN, which helps the Hmong women earn money to support their families with clothing and fashion accessories featuring Hmong-inspired embroidery. For this part of my work, I photograph some of the products to be used for the website and for the Instagram to keep the feed updated. In simpler terms, I take photos for the organization when they need professional photos taken and I talk to the Hmong community members and sometimes teach them stretches and some English. It’s pretty lax.
I was really nervous at first to intern here because I thought I had to be like super knowledgeable to get involved with the nonprofit right away. But I realize that it’s all a learning process. Even the full-time staff there who are “real adults” are just kinda winging it sometimes — which isn’t to discredit their work, but it’s just to bring perspective on how little pressure there is for me to be like a perfect intern or whatever. I’m also not getting paid (I get course credit which will hopefully go towards my major though) so that’s something for me to remember. But there’s really not that much pressure for me to do the Most™.
Regardless, I really enjoy the atmosphere and being around other Southeast Asian folks in general. I so wish I could talk to them more, but only a few of the refugees can speak Vietnamese and my Vietnamese is so spotty that I can’t really hold a deep conversation with them. In the beginning, I often felt like I wasn’t qualified to be an intern there and that I should have come to this organization at a later point in my life where I was “more ready” for it (and hopefully by then will know more Vietnamese), but I realize now that I don’t ever have to feel 100% ready for anything. Heck, when will I EVER feel 100% ready for something? I didn’t even feel 100% ready to go abroad and I’m still out here thriving. I really need to stop being hard on myself and setting absurdly high expectations for myself.
… which I suppose leads me to my next point in how I’ve been doing in general while abroad.
Sometimes I feel like I am not doing enough, or that I myself am not enough. That bleeds pretty quickly into my guilt complex of being here in Thailand.
I think I’ve talked about this before where I often feel like I don’t deserve to be studying abroad here in Thailand. Honestly sometimes I don’t even know why I feel like this. Quite honestly, I’m having the time of my fucking LIFE here. The food is great, everything’s affordable (for me as an American traveler), there’s so many wonderfully unfamiliar sights to see and explore, the people are amazing (and beautiful), and my mental health has actually overall improved since I got here. Like wow, my life was so deprived before I came here LOL. So, why do I feel like I shouldn’t be here?
To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know why I feel incompetent or unqualified to be here, but I do. I guess it’s normal for me to sell myself short, as sad as it sounds. It’s really oddly unfamiliar to give myself things that will genuinely make me happy. But I’m trying to get used to it. Shedding the layers of guilt that I feel for having nice things and going on fun trips is definitely challenging. But I’m trying. I’m trying. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s all part of the process of unlearning classism — that I, as someone who grew up in a low-income household, can and should have nice things. I deserve to give myself nice things, even if they’re expensive, and not feel guilty about it.
My mental health is also, for the most part, stablizing. It still fluctuates but I’m managing.
I’ve had racing thoughts that all revolve around the idea of “enough.” Sometimes I look at other UCEAP kids’ trips to the islands and other countries and think that I’m not traveling enough. I go to my favorite noodle stand near my apartment to order the same egg noodles with roasted pork and think I’m not trying enough new Thai foods. I overhear conversations between Thai students and exchange students and feel bad about not making “enough” Thai/local friends. On the weekends, I feel guilty for sleeping in and think I’m not exploring Bangkok enough. And these thoughts are just layered on top of the other thoughts I’ve already been carrying for so long: not studying enough, not working out enough, not saving enough money but also not spending enough money to satisfy myself, not sleeping enough.
I try to counter this negative spiral of thoughts though by recounting what I have done and fully enjoyed. I went to Chiang Mai and fucking hung out with some elephants. For my birthday, I was in an infinity pool at a nice ass airbnb with two good friends I’ve made here. I’ve been to Vietnam, Singapore (twice now), and Malaysia, all of which were so worthwhile to go visit. I saw the Marina Bay Sands and the club where CRA was filmed (still haven’t bumped into Constance Wu yet, sad face). I tried fried stingray while in Singapore. I went to Universal Studios for the first time ever — IN SINGAPORE. I’ve had Malay food for the first time and it’s DAMN good. I ride on the back of a motorcycle taxi every week to get to my internship. I have Chinese donuts every morning for breakfast for like $.33. I HAVE BOBA ALMOST EVERY DAY (OK that’s probably definitely not healthy for me so I’ve been cutting back recently… kinda). Like damn. I’ve built a lifestyle/routine here without even realizing it and I am FULLY enjoying it.
There will always be more that I could do or more experiences that I haven’t had yet, but it’s unfair to myself to neglect the experiences I’ve already gained and enjoyed. I just need to keep reminding myself of that.
This state of stable mental health that I’m getting closer and closer to is finally being able to hear myself — my own voice and not the ones I’ve constructed in my mind that prod at my insecurities and plant seeds of doubt in my mind. And it feels great.
Anyways, thank you for anyone who’s made it this far in staying updated with me! I honestly love hearing like not necessarily your feedback but just your thoughts and usually how you can relate to my experiences, so don’t hesitate to ever reply or reach out! I’m on the other side of the world but I’m still a message away. Damn, I feel like a famous influencer or something. Anyways stay tuned for my next post that I’ll try to stay consistent with! It’ll be with updates from outside of Bangkok this time ;-)
