personal reflections on healing, solitude, writing, home, and the small moments shaping my life.
in the notebook
the last time i saw Laurent was at a little French bistro in Saigon. i ordered a cocktail, and he wanted to try the pain perdu. there was something almost unbearably ordinary about it, the two of us sitting there, choosing small things from a menu. the forty-five minutes
in the notebook
on the days when i am trying to crawl out of alcohol withdrawal symptoms, like right now, i often think of a few lines by Charles Bukowski. "some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight."
in the notebook
the city doesn't love me. maybe it never did. people whisper my name like a curse they're trying not to invoke, or a storm they once survived and fear might come back stronger. they're terrified because i remind them of what they tried to
in the notebook
when all the expensive lipsticks in the world can no longer keep you calm, when all the luxury, the bright events, the perfect outfits, the exchange rates with too many zeros, and the direct flights to promised lands still cannot quiet the ache in your chest. and somewhere between those
in the notebook
he still calls me Bails. sixteen years have passed. cities changed, faces aged, lovers came and went, but the nickname never did. sometimes it lands in my inbox like a ghost from another decade, small and familiar, stripped of the weight it once carried but still sharp enough to sting.
in the notebook
i realized that the version of me who comes out when i'm drunk is strangely the person i have always wished i could be when i'm sober: warm, easy, laughing without thinking, unafraid of being seen. i remember the railway tracks. the nights we wandered like
in the notebook
i remember life in colors. the blue of the sea in Nha Trang, from the time i was thrown off a jet ski. the green of the trees in the park, seen from the balcony of the restaurant i used to sit at in the city. the pale silver-grey
in the notebook
while everyone seems determined to turn every painful experience into a lesson about positivity, i think we should be allowed to admit that some things were simply awful. that we survived things we should never have had to survive, and that they changed us in ways we may never completely
in the notebook
i come from a city far away, where my childhood once lived inside a shabby little house that somehow still felt warm, where dinner always came with three dishes, my father spoke to me with a softness i thought would always be there, and the windows opened onto gentle sunlight.
in the notebook
i used to think the troubles of the world belonged to newspapers. wars, upheavals, collapsing worlds, people losing everything overnight. they felt like chapters in some unbearably long novel written about other people's lives. you read them, feel something for a moment, turn the page, and eventually forget.
in the notebook
they say, it is a strange. to belong to Saigon and still have nowhere to call home. as though my heart had been misplaced somewhere in the crowded streets, as though even my longing had forgotten where it was meant to return. they say, it is heartbreaking. a child of
in the notebook
the quiet collapse, or April weeps in Da Nang— call it what you want. this version of me isn't glittering. she's scarred, strange, starving herself some days. but she shows up. she brushes her hair. she drinks her water. and when the sun touches her skin,