"I was down and out. I did not want to die, but I did not want to live either. I had just dried up after years of alcoholic drinking. My career was in the toilet. My immediate and extended family had stopped speaking to me. Most of them still don't. At 37, my spark was gone. I did not feel curious about the future or interested in becoming anything else."
"I did not go to Cambodia to find myself . I went because I could afford to exist there. Siem Reap was cheap, quiet enough, and far away from the life I had already failed at. That was the appeal. I rented a small apartment and kept my head down. I was not trying to build a new life; I was trying to reduce the old one to something manageable."
A thirty-seven-year-old sober man relocates to Siem Reap after years of alcoholism and estrangement from family. He moves because living there is affordable and distant from his failed life in the United States. He keeps a low profile, renting a small apartment and aiming to make his past manageable rather than rebuild a new life. The city's slow pace and open presence let him notice small sensory details and regain curiosity. He begins accepting small social interactions and experiences. Curiosity, rather than ambition or hope, motivates him to explore food, roads, and conversations and to meet someone on Tinder.
Read at HuffPost
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