After settling into my beautiful hotel room, I went down to the beach. Because it was 5pm, I didn't come prepared for swimming and a day of beachgoing. All the bean bag chairs my resort puts on the beach were full and the island rhythm was quickly headed toward cocktail hour. The tide was low, the beach was wide and the air was thankfully cooling. So I walked.
This is the first time I've stayed this far north on Ko Samet. Mind you, that's not actually a lot of distance in the real world – maybe 200 yards. Still, it does put me in a different "neighborhood" at the top of Hat Saikaew – meaning Whitesand Beach. Of course all the beaches are the same baby powder fine, squeaky white sand – but Hat Saikaew is the largest of them and most accessible from the ferry docks – so therefore the busiest with the most hotels, restaurants and beach chairs. When I was younger, it was THE beach I wanted to be on – only to save money, I would stay at a smaller beach down the way and "commute" up. Today I have a lot more love for the smaller, quieter, more remote beaches.
This stay at Saikaew was intentional. Last trip in December 2022 – only four months have separating from Emily and six after she filed for divorce – I fled south to Ao Vongduean - a beautiful and quiet beach I had never stayed before, but always liked. When I came up to Saikaew, I found walking it hard. The memories of our 2021 Thailand trip as a family and Emily and my 2011 year-long-honeymoon flooded me. I felt nothing but sad. The happy memories of my time on Ko Samet before Emily couldn't overpower the very fresh pain and so I walked Saikaew only one time and never spent the day.
This trip, I needed to take back the beach. Hat Saikaew was mine long before Emily entered my life and I had memories I didn't feel like relegating. So a simple sunset walk along a favorite beach was an act of reclamation. And it worked. I didn't feel overwhelmed and I was at peace with all of the memories. They all had their place own the story again and I could look without flinching.
It went well enough – and the tide was low enough – that I went several beaches down, almost as far as I could walk without needing a "road".
I remembered my first day on Ko Samet in 2001. The TEFL school I was attending in Ban Phe on the mainland side of the water charted a boat to take us all to the most remote beach on the island – which had one one small bungalow operation that used salt water for their plumbing as no fresh water was available. The main road of the island didn't even extend down there. We jumped off the boat into crystal clear, bathwater warm water and swam to shore – like in The Beach, which wasn't that old at the time. The owners of the school brought lunch and we all enjoyed the spectacular beach.
At the end of the day, we had a choice – get back on the boat and head back to town, or wander Ko Samet on our own. Naturally, everyone under 30 stayed. At a time when simple beach bungalows went for $8 a night and needed no reservations – and the ferry ride back cost 50 cents – Saturday night on Ko Samet was on. Ko Samet was a twenty-something's Tom Sawyer's island.
As we walked from the bottom of the island beach by beach, cove by cove toward Saikaew, it was like a wonderland of possibilities unfolding, a map of future experiences laid out in this unimaginably gorgeous place.
For a half hour yesterday, I saw that Ko Samet. It was mine again.
After the walk, while getting a foot massage on the beach (one of the itinerant massage ladies was looking for her last customer of the day and I didn't feel like refusing her….), I wondered how much of the story – my story, any story – was completely true. I'm not sure if I'm a victim of the new Post-Truth world, but recently I have come to increasingly if there really is one true story – or if there are just some facts seen and arranged by lenses and perspectives. I used to hate the phrases "my truth" , "your truth" "their truth", etc because the idea that we get to own "truth" instead of acknowledge we have opinions and perspectives seems entitled and dangerous.
However, there is A truth in there. The idea that not only do we all experience life differently, but that the narratives people build around a situation in fact shape the truth we live with. Whether or not I take personal responsibility or assign blame changes my life trajectory and everything I think and do from that moment onward. The reasons I assign to an event or a person's behavior does the same thing. Likewise, what someone tells me or others about me may well change my self-perception, affect my self-worth and even affect the values I develop. Our emotional outlooks, decision making and general interpretation of the world come from the stories we choose to believe – many of which we tell ourselves.
Therapy is all about helping us reexamine our perceptions and beliefs – helping us to critically review and even flip the story.
I find as I get older – especially in the past couple of years – I am better at seeing multiple versions of the stories, different lenses from which to look at things – and I struggle to determine which version to buy into. In a sense, I become exhausted and overwhelmed because I struggle to settle on a story – leaving other strands of my life incohesive. Sometimes the best I can do is put a mental marker on things – nothing that there are several versions of a story that are possible and allowing myself as best as possible to punt on coming to a conclusion. For me, it's both a new and torturous endeavor.
For example, sometimes I think I should work on things harder and any failure will be the result of my insufficient efforts. Other times I think intense persistence may cloud or narrow my judgment and keep me from being my most creative self. Some things require agency and tenacity. Others require patience and persistence. How do I know which time it is? What if it's not even a binary choice?! After all, light is both a wave and a particle – which theoretically shouldn't be possible.
Even more challenging – as I reach a point in my life where I see things in ever-less-binary terms, what do I make of all my old stories, beliefs and decisions that were binary-based? Did the world always have more shades or gray? Or did it have more colors than my mind could comprehend? Or none of the above? Or both?
How does an adult whose mind is no longer as open as that of a child find his way back to a mind that hadn't yet developed all the fixed beliefs and shortcut thinking (short of microdosing hallucinogens)?
I was able to take back Hat Saikaew with a perception – a shift in my story. Or maybe it's just making room for stories to co-exist in a new library? In this case, the perceptual change relieves my pain and leads to a hopeful path forward – so it's easy to conclude it's a good choice. But maybe it misses some other important point? Maybe it's a delusion that helps me get by with an important lesson or few ignored?
I am my own unreliable narrator.
I suppose for today – right now – that's okay. Ko Samet is barely reality. That's why I come here. Samet has no town, no permanent community. It is a perpetual paradise – a place that exists solely for tourists' enjoyment and peace. Samet is stepping out of the world. So I can set down all of these thoughts and struggles next to my beach chair and sunscreen. My hope is to let go and find myself clearer and better able to see when I take the boat back on Thursday.
