It's over.

I've long said that the relationship between an expatriate and her country of residence is not unlike a love affair. At first, everything is new and exciting- it's a sensory overload of sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations... You are often at a loss of what to do or say, but you really want to learn more, to deepen your communication, to achieve a level of mutual understanding. Slowly but surely you learn... and you start to really love this place where you live. Sometimes things happen that you don't understand, but you shake your head and laugh and say, "Oh, that's just Chiang Mai."

Time goes on and you settle into a comfortable symbiosis. You and your city now seem to understand each other- you know how to live together in harmony. You know what times he's busy and what times he's free (i.e.-when it's safe to cruise comfortably through the streets and when you'll be sitting in the broiling sun or pounding rain stuck in traffic for hours on end).

More time passes and you realize that those little incidents that happen that you used to laugh off as cute and endearing now are starting to annoy you. You used to love that the guy selling the dried squid who rides slowly down your street on Saturday mornings, ringing that bell to announce his presence, and bringing with him the pungent smell of old fish. How quaint. How wonderfully exotic and interesting. Little by little, though, you've found yourself starting to cringe at the sound of that bell and plugging your nose to block out that sickening smell that you know will follow. It no longer seems interesting or exotic, only annoying.

More and more things like this start happening- and you find yourself complaining more than you used to. And suddenly you realize- this isn't working... I'm not happy anymore. It's time to end this. It's time to move on. It's over.

The inevitable period of indecision follows- can't there be some way to make this work, you ask yourself? We've been together for so long, we've had so many good times together...

In the end, for me, with Chiang Mai, there is no way to work it out. I'm more than a little heartbroken, but there's comfort in knowing that it's time to move on. I will miss my life here more than I can say and seeing pictures of the Chiang Mai valley will always send my heart into pangs of reminiscing.

I'm feeling weepy now and this is not the time for a tearful catharsis (the middle of a Wednesday afternoon in my florescent-lit office) so I will end with this: I leave September 24th, three weeks from today. Three weeks after my 3rd anniversary of arriving in Chiang Mai. I am going to visit Tobe in Sweden and then Menno in Holland, then to Charleston for a while, then to New York, to do exactly what I don't yet know.

I will miss you Chiang Mai people so much. I can't believe this is ending.