The Price of Paradise
Life on a tropical island is way more simple, but it ain’t fucking easy.
By Mitra Sabeti
When you tell people that you live on a tiny tropical island in Thailand, there’s usually one of two things they say: “You’re so lucky!” or “You’re so brave!”
Well I can tell you, I’ve never felt particularly lucky and as far as being brave I’ve always thought of myself as being too clueless and short sighted to know better. I mean don’t get me wrong — I certainly am grateful for the opportunity to live here and even more so that I took the leap to actually do it, but as the saying goes, “Wherever you go, there you are.”
I know that to most people, just picking up stakes and leaving the western world behind to huck yourself into the abyss of the unknown seems pretty daring and glamorous but really in the end, life is life wherever you go, we just have better scenery and it does actually come at a cost. Life here is for sure way more simple, but it ain’t fucking easy.
Not long after moving to Koh Phangan in 2017 with my then husband and five year old son, I started referring to Koh Phangan as the island of misfit toys from the old claymation movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. ‘Member that?
That’s pretty much why many of us end up moving here, we don’t feel like we truly belong in the world we’ve grown up in and don’t want to live lives of quiet desperation trying to conform to our cultural norms of origin. We are seekers…looking for a way to live our lives by the rules WE make and to live with those of like minds…
we are looking for our tribe. Even though I have this sort of seemingly envious life, it’s been my experience that it’s so incredibly difficult to actually just get here and even harder sometimes to stay. These past 7.5 years have probably been the darkest, loneliest times I have ever experienced in my life.
How the fuck did I get here
Once you get the cursory remarks about how lucky and/or brave you are for doing something so unbelievably against the grain and audacious as moving to a foreign land, the next thing that usually comes out of people’s mouths is, “What made you decide to move to Thailand?”
Someday I’m going to writ a best selling novel about my life titled, how the fuck did i get here and then every chapter will be titled the same, but just with different punctuation letter casing: HOW the fuck did i get here…how the FUCK did i get here…HOW THE FUCK DID I GET HERE!?!
I was privileged enough to grow up in a family that had the opportunity to travel A LOT through my father’s work. To date, I’ve been to 92 countries and by the time I was 13 I’d circumnavigated the globe 7 times. When I was 13, my father got stationed in Jakarta, Indonesia where I went to highschool. Spring break of my freshman year I went to Bali for the first time and as I was sitting in the hotel pool with all my best friends, no parental supervision and us taking turns putting pitchers of margaritas on our parents’ tabs I remember thinking “THIS is what I want to do when I grow up!”
From that moment forward, there was no other option for me than to live in Bali one day and to give my future children the same wonderful experiences I had during my time living abroad. Well - spoiler alert - as determined as I was, it took me 27 years to make it back over here. There are a plethora of reasons for why it took me so long, but I think the biggest one is this: We in the western world are SO indoctrinated to think and feel and breathe the idea and belief that if you dare to dream to venture beyond the parameters of the world you grew up in, there will never be any sort of safety net to catch you if it all goes tits up. And if you’re a misfit toy, that belief is excruciating because you end up feeling like you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
The Biggest Gamble You’ll Ever Take
I never imagined I would be a single mom, let alone a middle-aged single mom in a foreign country far from my friends and family and everything I know.
When people hear that you live on some tropical, paradise island in Thailand they automatically think your life must just be fucking awesome…that somehow you’ve “traded up”. But the reality is, you’ve just traded in one set of problems for another. We get the privilege of not being confined by most of the societal norms and trappings that fucking suffocated us in our western lives and upbringings - the very things we wanted to get away from by moving here. There are a lot of things that most of us just couldn’t tolerate about our countries of origin that we have an abundance of opportunity and freedom to do and live and be here that we could NEVER get away with back home. But to get here, you have to make choices and sacrifices that are so incredibly beyond difficult and what most people are willing to make. It’s probably the biggest gamble in the world and the stakes are high and you HAVE to be willing to go all in.
Of course there are certain annoyances about living in a foreign country…the language barrier can be frustrating at times for sure. There are days that I feel like if I have to see one more weird insect or reptile or centipede or mosquito that might actually be able to kill me I’m just going to hop on the next plane home. Grocery shopping is a fucking nightmare - not being able to just get what you want when you want it…when I go back to the states the first thing I do is go to a grocery store and stand in each aisle for hours just crying and taking pictures. I never actually buy anything because ultimately having so many choices is so fucking overwhelming…I mean there’s like a bajillion different kinds of Reese’s peanut butter cups…wtf? And it’s pretty hard to have a conversation here without it eventually turning to everyone bitching about their visa situation. But, I mean - first world problems…am right? There are a multitude of minor inconveniences that you just endure and in these circumstances, the trade-off is actually pretty high - I haven’t had a Reese’s peanut butter cup in 8 years, but I don’t have a mortgage or a car payment and I can leave my son pretty much anywhere without fear of him being abducted or that some nut job will go postal and shoot up his school and I can work in flip flops and smoke pretty much anywhere I want. Living here is actually pretty fabulous but the life part of it all here can be so incredibly hard.
In 2012, my father was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, which is actually one reason we were delayed in getting here, we felt like we couldn’t leave my mother to deal with it alone. Eventually though, we had to make a choice - we could no longer put our lives on hold to help care for him…he was never going to get better and in fact, it was only going to get MUCH worse. When we FINALLY moved here, we had to do so knowing full well it might be the last time we saw my father, the last time our son saw him. We made it home for Thanksgiving that first year and he passed away the following April. But we made that choice - that any time we got on a plane back to Thailand might be the last time we’d see him and everyone who hucks themselves into the abyss of the unknown by moving abroad has to make that choice…and it is awful…and we are told it is selfish…we FEEL that it is selfish…but that’s the cost of this life.
So we finally made it here and now I’m going to give you a quick breakdown on how the past few years have played out for me:
YEAR 1: Got dengue fever, separated from my husband and broke up my child’s home, became a single mom.
YEAR 2: Started a new relationship - that ultimately almost destroyed me mentally, emotionally, physically and financially, got hospitalized with dengue AGAIN, left my steady job to open a taco stand in the night market, my father died.
YEAR 3: My son got hospitalized with dengue and I spent my entire life savings building my dream restaurant that had its grand opening on Monday, March 16, 2020 and the next day some new disease called Covid shut the entire world down., I lost almost every cent I had and spent the rest of that year maxing out my credit cards trying to keep it going to no avail.
In the midst of all that, I was dealing with that mentally and emotionally and financially abusive relationship, having a very nasty and difficult time with my ex, my son was constantly getting lice to the point I had to shave my head 3 times, I got Covid, and most of my friends had left the island because of the virus… sadly a few of them decided to take their own lives.
And so there I was. I was so completely fucking alone.
On top of that, I’d lost most of my connections with people back home — my touchstone people — because the time difference is a bitch but also because unfortunately those people that find us so lucky and brave for moving here actually have an exceptional lack of sympathy for you. It’s almost as if — because we made the choice to live here — we’ve given up the right to grieve or hurt or complain because this is what we signed up for.
There are a million different things that are exceptionally challenging about living abroad. There are a million different things that are exceptionally wonderful about being an expat and the endless litany of ways you are able to live so much more freely than you probably would be able to if you’d stayed in your country and life and beliefs of origin. But there is a loneliness and a fear and an isolation that comes with it.
My morbid exit plan
I thought leaving my dying father would be the toughest thing about moving here, but the stakes are even higher in a way most people don’t realize —-- in a way I never could have imagined they would be. I never imagined I would be a single mom, let alone a middle-aged single mom in a foreign country far from my friends and family and everything I know. And now, there’s truly NO going back.
If I were to decide tomorrow to leave here, the only realistic place I could go would be back to America. But I can’t go back to America because I couldn’t afford to care for my son there and leaving him here, halfway around the world, is not an option for me… but there are times I do contemplate it and have to seriously consider it on a deep ass, come to Jesus gut level - what would be in his best interest - and there may come a day that I have to make that atrocious decision.
But I also can’t go back to America because I haven’t been in the workforce for almost 8 years. I’m no longer qualified to do anything at the level or experience that is required there these days. And I have no credit…can’t buy a car, take a loan, get a house. I’d be an almost 50-year-old woman living with my mom in a town I don’t particularly have any desire to live in, missing the opportunity to be a part of my child’s life, most likely waiting tables just to save enough to be able to afford seeing my son once a year.
I have no savings, no retirement fund and I will probably never be able to make enough working here to have either.
I’ve missed weddings and births and deaths back home because I don’t really have the ability to just jump on a plane at the drop of a hat so I’ve missed and will continue to miss a lot of important moments in my life and the lives of people I care about.
And then there’s this: if something were to happen… if I were to get really sick… I’d be fucked. If — God forbid — anything like that were to happen, going back to the states would also not be an option for me. So my single expat girlfriends and I — as morbid as it is — sit around and share our “exit” plans if we were to become terminally ill over here. My friend Helen is going to rent a yacht full of hot, young fuckboys who are given the directive to get her laid and drunk and high and when she least expects it, just kick her overboard.
Mine is to max out my credit cards taking my son on dope ass trips and then come back here and rent a gorgeous villa and stock it with all the booze and all the drugs and all my friends and when all the booze and drugs are done, sit in the infinity pool looking out over the ocean at sunset and just shoot myself up with a lethal dose of heroin.
THIS is the true price of paradise.
Place your bets…
Living on a tropical island I think people assume that my life must be somehow magically fucking awesome. I’m pretty sure that’s what I believed or hoped in moving here. It seems that life here should be hearts popping out of your head and unicorns shooting out your ass…and in so many ways it is, but the reality of it is actually pretty harsh. There are for sure some kick ass things about living here…life here is wonderfully simple, but it ain’t fucking easy. The stakes are higher than you can ever imagine in ways you could never possibly imagine.
Living here has been the darkest, loneliest, most difficult time of my life… and I absolutely would NOT trade it for all the Reese’s peanut butter cups in the world and I will tell you why… I am exceedingly confident that, it was this time that has helped me to become the person I have always wanted to be… the woman and daughter and mother and friend that I’m fairly certain I never would have had the ability or courage or space or freedom to become if I’d stayed where I was back in the life everyone expected I should have. But at least the claymation misfit toys eventually got off the island and were accepted for who and how they were. That’s not necessarily the reality or even an option for many of us once we move here.
There’s nothing particularly special about me. All I did was make a choice and follow it through. If I’d had the foresight for a moment to imagine that it would all have played out as it has, I probably never would have decided to diverge so far from my safety net.
But no matter what it has cost me, it has given me so much more than it has ever taken away. My worst day here has still been better than my best day back home, but you gotta play to pay. None of this has anything to do with luck or bravery and in life - no matter where you are - the reality is that there is no safety net waiting to catch you if you fall, it’s something you just have to create for yourself. So really, the only thing it comes down to is:
Are you willing to pay the price?
I am speechless and full on crying. Bravo 👏 for capturing and articulating something so many of us feel and experience. Thank you both for this piece.
Mitra is both funny and fearless in her writing. I can't wait for more