Broken, Beaten, Bruised in Brooklyn (ok, Manhattan but I like alliteration an awful lot)

My life is the stuff of  which movies are made.

Lifetime movies perhaps, but movies nonetheless.

Sure, we all have our crosses to bear but let's be real - some of us are dealt far different hands than others. Now, I was not born into a country where the oppression of women is sanctioned, regardless of how you feel about the recent election results. And I am very grateful that not only do I possess all four limbs, but they all function with a fair amount of ease and reliability.

But sometimes , having your arms and legs is just not enough (see: Lorelai Gilmore).

Life is hard. And when life gets hard you have two choices, you can grin and bear it, it you can run.

My natural inclination is a position teetering somewhere between the two, so after two months spent within the four walls of my Northern Manhattan compound doing nothing but bearing (grinning was far less frequent) - I ran.

Two days ago I booked a ticket to a place that was warm and inexpensive. And today, I am on a plane, dressed in a maroon sweatsuit looking far more ready to enter the hallowed halls of Bada Bing than headed for Southeast Asia.

Cambodia to be exact.

A country known for it's majestic temples and genocidal tendencies, it offers 80 degree temperatures in December, 10 dollar a night accommodation and 9000 miles between me and my real life.

With my life, and my wardrobe, spread across 3 states I was not as prepared for this spontaneous voyage as I typically am, so I had to forego my trusty backpack and go to travel staples for a personalized  LL Bean oversized tote, filled with a smattering of spandex based clothing, a pair of chucks and my camera.

There are many suggestions on how to get over heartbreak; how to grieve the loss of a loved one; how to bounce back from personal tragedy. When you spend a couple months in self imposed isolation you might come across an article or two telling you to eat well or spend time with friends. Start new projects or meditate. My father was always adamant with the adage 'don't isolate.' I can recall his repeating of this simple statement numerous times throughout my life but, without him here to enforce it, I was left to my own devices.

On a plane now, wedged next to a genial man from Virginia, after an early morning ride to Newark, a 6 hour flight to SFO and a 6 second layover before hauling ass to the terminal leaving for Seoul, South Korea I am no longer alone. I'm trapped in a tin box with a thousand Koreans and no access to the outside world. An ancient tin box with no personal television sets built in, a necessity when on a 12 hour flight. Little relief is experienced by watching the single small television mounted to the ceiling playing videos of NKOTB, Hall and Oats and a non-descript girl with a bob and a bralette from the early 90s. The fact that the feed freezes and skips only adds to the excitement. No WiFi and no end in sight.

Just when I thought things couldn't get worse and I couldn't get anymore uncomfortable the flight attendants offered a turbulent beverage service all over my new Sopranos inspired threads, which at least shook things up for a moment.

If this is what being back in public is like I'll gladly retire to my couch.

But now I'm in it, half way across the world living my ''Oprah best life,'' trying to make a semblance out of the rubble from the past couple of years, and all I can think about is love lost. 12 hours with no distraction and a mind that spins and wanders even when Netflix and Hulu are only a finger tap away is a dangerous thing.

The poor portly fellow next to me who must wonder how I go from the charming butterfly I am one moment to a woman on the edge of crisis in a tearful cocoon the next. Though he is a man, so perhaps he is oblivious.

After an excruciating 12+ hours fraught with stale air, indifferent flight attendants, repulsive cuisine and a major lack of entertainment we made it - the majestic mountains of Seoul draped in undulating fog greeted us just before landing in a hazy cloud of smog, making it all the more clear why some of our friends from the Far East wear surgical masks as their favorite accessory.

A quick goodbye to my new travel bestie Dexter who was off to simulate war crimes for a living with the government up North and I was headed to the international wing for a 7:30pm flight to Phnom Phen, but not before sampling some udon noodles that tasted of fiery hot pepper and fish - delish.

With mere moments to exchange my paper ticket that said United seat 20 a to a paper ticket that said Asiana Airlines seat 20 and to admire the beautifully cherubic children scurrying around the terminal it was on yet another plane. My third of the day. And my last, hopefully, for a while.

5 more turbulent hours, both emotionally and otherwise and I was in Phnom Phen, where I was met with a 30 dollar visa charge, not one but two Burger Kings and a throng of Cambodians as impatient and unaware of personal space as they were sticky from the tropical night air.

On the road in an open air tuk tuk and I gotta say, as hesitant as I often am to hop a plane to nowhere with no plan and no friends, for the first time all over again. Part of it always feels like coming home.

The Day The Music Died/For Whom The Bell's Tolls/I'm On My Way to Uruguay

June 17th - the day the music died.

Confrontational by nature I have chosen to deal with this particular anniversary a bit differently. In October, when His birthday was upon us, I booked a trip to Southeast Asia and spent the 29th changing planes in Tokyo, so jet lagged and wanderlustful that it was easy to let the day go by, almost unnoticed. Now I have two separate days a year from which to escape - a welcomed excuse to travel, if not for the best reasons.

Today, June 17th 2015, I board a plane to Montevideo, Uruguay. I will arrive in this foreign land after touching down in both Houston and Rio de Janeiro - almost guaranteed to be too distracted with overpriced airport fare and restless upright slumber to see the sun rise and set on a day that changed my life entirely and forever.

I could talk about my father endlessly. From what I am told I always have.

Regardless of whether I was on a first date or on a transatlantic call with an old friend, my dad came up in nearly every conversation. He touched every part of my life in an incalculable way. Even when living 3000 miles apart it was he who I called to help me pick out an appropriate pair of running shoes. It was he who I forwarded inappropriate text messages from unsavory men to, hoping for some insight into the bewildering gender. He knew what I had had for lunch on any given day, because he was most likely on the phone with me when I ordered it. When someone is this involved in your life, their absence is felt in such a profound way that there is no safe place to hide.

Movies and books are simply things you want to discuss with the Shel Silverstein inspired missing piece.

Decisions to be made, contracts to be signed. Ensembles to be purchased. With a relationship this intimate and a bond this unbreakable, like the strands of DNA coursing through both of your veins, there is no possible way to detach.

I have a very kind, if very dim friend who recently suggested perhaps it was time to 'let go' of him. Now, I know this gentle giant meant well, but he is an idiot. There is no way I could let go of my father without erasing my very existence; without destroying who I am. What I can do, is manage the feeling of loss and the reality of a new life. In recent weeks I have likened this shift to diabetes. A condition that is not fatal, but chronic. One from which you can never be cured, but hopefully, through trial and error, you can manage - you can live with.

Trying to live with it; trying to #keepwalkingkeepwinning is what I have chosen to do. So here it goes...

What better way for me, a bit of a travel junkie, then to pack up my bag and head south to visit a new land and mark a year of torture, ready to turn the page on a new perspective, a new life?

This new perspective was in no small way aided by a recent health crisis.

Three weeks before my scheduled departure to Uruguay, a country about which I know absolutely nothing, I suffered a bit of paralysis. This was scary, sudden and very very unattractive. This physical manifestation of a 12 months of stress, sadness, love and loss could have made me sink deeper into the pool of depression in which I have been more than wading for some time now. It should have pushed me over the edge, but for some reason, awaking to a face that only half functions and a right hand too jittery from either nerve damage in my once so efficient brain or the meds used to help quell that has left me, better...

When your body starts to scream at you. When it starts to turn on you. You have no choice but to listen.

So I did what any grief stricken, partially paralyzed young woman would do to deal with the world falling down around her. I grabbed my camera, packed a duffle bag, and foraged forward.

Travel has it's ups and downs. There are always the rude passengers and endless lines, but being seated next to a nice young Mormon man on the Houston - Rio leg of my journey south of the equator allowed me to have a conversation about faith, marriage and family with a total stranger and, despite the fact that he asked about my own personal timeline for marriage and children, started my trip off in this positive vein, on in which I am attempting to live.

Having long harbored a fantasy of being a Latina through and through, the Rachel Dolezal of Afro-Latin America (yes - that was for you and yes, you know who you are...), being mistaken for a native in Brazil - flattered though I may be, was fantastically awkward as I don't know how to utter a Portuguese syllable yet alone understand a series of phrases and/or questions thrown in my direction, intensifying in speed and agility the more contorted my already stroke induced face looks.

Wedged into the last seat on the plane, confined to a space few Americans could fit according to the most recent obesity polls did not in any way stop me from uncomfortably passing out before take off on the last leg of my multi-stop voyage to Montevideo. I was awoken by the sounds of a snotty pubescent both figuratively and literally. Spoiled brat seems to transcend language and when my empathy for the teary teenage quickly gave way to disgust once I realized her tears were not over Sean Cassidy or the Biebs, but over the fact that she was not pleased to be served a muffin during the snack coarse on the plane. 

Off the plane and quickly ushered through immigration I grabbed some pesos, hopped in Angel's Mercedes cab and took what I only later realized as a $60 cab ride to Mercado del Puerto, the hotel at which I would be laying my head the next couple of days.

The drive in was at dusk and gorgeous and once I made an attempt to chat casually en espanol with my driver I settled into my South American sojourn.

Death, taxes and For Whom The Bell's tolls was left back on US soil, at least for the week, and the plan is to return, a woman reborn.

Wish me luck with that...

Ta Ta I am Off to Thailand

Awaking before the sun lit the sky I knew I was in for a long day.

A day better suited for the likes of John Candy in my mother's favorite 'Planes Trains and Automobiles' fraught with the aforementioned, several time zones and what I can only imagine to be a cacophony of calories only sourced from places like airports and train depots.

Tightly swaddled in my freshly purchased fur lined leggings and delicately mixing it with every pattern and color scheme known to man, I was ready. I was ready to hit the road for what was bound to be yet another adventure, another chapter in my already schizophrenic memoir.

Or was I?

With personal tragedy comes lots of introspection and already possessing and over-sized cranium that works harder than the North Pole in Winter introspection, speculation and preponderance have pretty much over taken my life.

Some big decisions have been made and some big changes lay in wait, leaving me a month in South East Asia with  a couple pair of leggings, some beat to shit Converse, my camera and the time and space to figure out who I am without the person who made me.

I've contemplated teaching English in Costa Rica, priced out a ticket to take me 'round the world in a whole lot more than 80 days and considered moving to a number of domestic locations, most romantically New Orleans.

And this is where I landed, 1,000 pound bag on my back and my homeless chic attire in full bloom. Passport in hand and nothing but uncertainty as far as the eye can see.

An easy check in at ANA Airlines, a nickname from a dear friend, seems to be to be a good sign and free Halloween candy at the counter solidifies my suspicion.

And with a fun sized Milky Way in my breast pocket, I'm off. Off on the sort of flight bursting at the seems with people who so clearly look nothing like me, or me like them and who say things like 'thank you for your cooperation' when my inquiry into the procurement of hot tea is met with a disappointing no - as tea is saved for a later point in my 20 hour flight. I can only imagine this is more of a cultural 'lost in translation' than actual gratitude for me not throwing a full blown air fit.

One of my most favorite things about international flights is not the actual silverware or mandatory blanket and pillow but the extensive supply of current American movie titles I never got a chance to see but had accumulated on my mental 'gotta see at some point' list.

After watching a teen tearjerker about kids with cancer and not so much as a heavy mist in my big brown eyes I begin to flip through the options and seeing 'Taken 2' available in Japanese, Portuguese and English I burst into tears.

That is the funny thing about grief. That is the funny thing about loving someone despite the fact no longer at home reading, or working, or writing a report due on Monday, but gone. Gone completely. Gone in a way that can't be altered or adjusted or negotiated in any way. The kind of gone you just simply have to deal with it. And that is the kind of gone that elicits waterworks at the mere glimpse of a bad action sequel because your dad was, and will always be your own personal action hero.

10 minutes into the newly released film 'Dead Poets Society' and I can already tell Liam Neeson may have been the more prudent choice for an emotional woman like myself...

As I look out at the Japanese landscape during our decent I can't help but think back to my only other experience in Asia. Last year, en route to Vietnam I had a layover in China. Not one to get excited over much past the occasional 'Nsync concert in my teenage years I had a 'holy shit I am in China moment' and have a clear visual of calling my dad from the airport to share this rare wonderment. Wheels down in Tokyo evokes a similar sentiment and I cannot help but think the man that shared my experience via Face Time nearly a year ago will now only share experiences, like this one, in a small metal vessel tucked securely into my carry on and set for trips around the world. Life is so bitter sweet.

Bitter when you realize the love of your life is gone. Sweet when you discover a woman in her 60s seated across the aisle from you is dressed like a member of the lollipop guild sans any dash of irony, and ones faith in humanity is restored.

I wanted to be offended when I deboarded and the kind air hostesses switched immediately from their native tongue to thickly accented English. A  5'7" white girl with a Michael Jackson sweatshirt on is bound to stand out, at least a little, after all, I am in the Far East.

An extended layover in the Narita airport, offset by ramen and Instagram and the final 6 hour leg of my flight begins, through most of which I sleep. That is until those tiny paper immigration cards that seem awfully antiquated to somehow protect homeland security are handed out and I  am able to look around the plane a bit.

A man in line boarding mentioned all the 'Westerners' but I saw no chaps and spurs , heard no John Wayne impersonations,so I thought little of it. Now, as I sit here with the haze of awkward travel slumber hanging heavy over me I see Westerners really means while people and, as is the case here, old white people.

I knew Thailand had become a popular destination for those recently retired and ready to turn it up on a pre-booked tour and for the kids sporting shiny new North Face backpacks who chose a location 'safe' enough to have daddy bankroll their senior spring break abroad, but man - there are a lot of white people on this plane. Sam Jackson should make a sequel ...

Once safely on the ground in Bangkok I am not only met with the thick humidity that pulls at my pant legs as I traipse through the nighttime air, but also with my travel mate for the week, a woman part family, part friend, too complicated to explain but too amazing not to love.

She has taken advantage of my voyage and tagged along for the first week to get a taste of the Orient, and the hostel life. We will she if she survives either...

Happy Birthday, Dad.