No, I Don't Need Another Half to Make Me Whole

My last blog received so many raves reviews that I am reticent to post another one. How can this post live up to the last one? Will I just crash and burn into the land of one hit wonders? The truth is, I could write about Hanoi all day and how much I love it and all of my day to day encounters, and while I do that as often as possible, this is afterall, a blog about ME... so my entries will contain smatterings of Aliceisms that hopefully my new readers will be able to tolerate :)

In my last entry, I spoke about my love of Hanoi and specifically how it is shaping me into a different person and allowing me the freedom to learn and discover new things about the world and myself. Sometimes it's easy to forget that there's more to life than the cocoon you've ensconced yourself in, and I think it took my moving here to fully recognize that.

One of the most difficult things I learned here was the impossibility of long distance relationships. When I moved here, I was in a relationship with a wonderful man in NYC, who truly has a heart of gold. I, we, truly believed that our love would be able to withstand the 12 hour time difference and the thousands of miles of distance. Somewhere along the way, we both realized that it was best to take a step back and accept that it simply wasn't working anymore. An amicable break up in which both parties had nothing but love and respect for each other.

This leads me to my newest learning experience: being single. This is an unknown territory for me and I find the whole thing a bit jarring. For the past four years, I've been part of a couple and before that I was always involved with someone. I can't remember a time from the age of sixteen that there wasn't a man in my life occupying my heart and attention. So this is the first time in ten years that I have been truly and utterly single. I must admit, I am having a complete panic attack about it, I don't really know what to do with myself. I'm really not interested in "going crazy" or even jumping into the "dating scene" (is there even one of those in Hanoi? I don't know)

I think it is perfectly fitting that this major life change is happening while I am out here exploring all kinds of realms that were unknown to me before. People are telling me to "embrace it" "love it" and "enjoy it" and maybe one day in the future I will be able to do all of these things but right now I am just learning how to be.