Bon

My best friend here is a fourteen-year-old boy. Am I surprised? Not in the slightest actually. Working for two years at a therapeutic camp for kids with autism and then teaching last year at a residential treatment center for individuals with severe emotional and behavioral disorders, I have spent the last three years of my life working almost exclusively with fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys. This means I have developed a special understanding of the inner workings of the fourteen-year-old mind but mostly it just means I’ve learned all about Pokémon, Yugioh, Adventure Time, Marvel Superheroes, and how to anticipate and answer unprompted questions such as “Because Superman’s suit is so tight, when he get’s an erection does everyone around him see it?”

However, the only questions Bon ever really asks me are “What are you doing?” “What did you do today?” “Where are you coming back from?” “Have you eaten dinner yet?” “Are you cold?” “Why are your hands so incredibly small?” But if he throws me any curveballs, you better be sure I will be ready for them (assuming I know the correct Thai vocabulary, of course). And if not, I will just do what I did with the million-dollar Super Appendage question and hope that, “Yes, I guess so, my friend”, is an adequate response.

My friendship with Bon has taken a very significant turn since I have returned home from vacation this past week – Bon has dropped the polite title of “Khun” (similar to Miss, but is most often only used with older individuals) before my name and now only refers to me as Bridgid. It only took him four and a half months for him to feel like he did not have to be formal around me, but I am glad that we have reached that little brother/ big sister point in official addressing as well as in action. I guess that’s what happens when you spend most afternoons listening to music, playing soccer, or just sitting together.

Unlike most Thais I have encountered here, Bon is extremely introverted and often needs to take time by himself after school to read his comic books or listen to music. Knowing that I, too, like to just be still and often times prefer it to conversation, he has graciously allowed me to enter into his sacred alone space. So this is how most of our interactions unfold. Most often without words. Just sitting. Just listening. Just thinking. Each wrapped up in our own contemplations to the soundtrack of a contemporary Thai pop song. While our thoughts are separate, the presence of the other, our mutual act of just being, reminds us that we are not alone.

Because for most of Bon’s life, he has been alone. Bon was born with HIV and was left to the care of an aunt after both his mother and grandmother froze to death during Thailand’s cold season, one year a part from each other. The aunt, however, did not have the best interests of Bon at heart. At the age of 11, she wanted him to stop going to school so that he could take care of her three children. For a child with an innate love of learning, this was akin to a death threat. Bon began to experience many psychosomatic symptoms, such as a persistent cough and fever, as a result of the depression brought on by his aunt’s wishes. With maturity I do not think I could have mustered at his age, Bon decided to take measures into his own hands. Bon was an outreach patient in one of the villages just like the families I visit twice a week to provide food, milk, and check that they are taking their medicines. When he knew he could not leave school, he reached out to the Outreach Program to see if there was any way he could live in the Garden. After a conversation with the Sister that runs the Care Center and is in charge of the Outreach Program, she decided it was best for him to live in our community. Bon has been living here for the past two years or so and while the community here in the Garden has become his family, I think this past week has been a reminder that he does not have a family to go home to.

With the culmination of the holiday season and 9 Christmas parties over three weeks, everyone around the Garden was ready for a little respite from karaoke, dancing, and Korean barbeque. Most of the patients went home to see family members right before the New Year while others chose to spend their New Year together camping at another patient’s home where they continued to sing karaoke and dance. My community members Anette and Gert headed off to Laos. Jiem and Wansai, members of the first family home in the Garden, went camping with relatives. Bee went to his sister’s house. Prio went to her cousin’s house. Tam and I went to Bangkok and a small island of the shore called Koh Chang. For most of the week leading up to and following the New Year, the only people left in the Garden were the bed-ridden patients, and Bon and Belle, another orphan living in the Garden. Generously, one of the social workers that works at the Center and also lives in the Garden in the same home as Bon, chose to push back her own family time so that she could make sure Bon and Belle had company and also activities to do every day.

My vacation on the islands was beyond relaxing and I am grateful to have had that time to process some of the events of the past four months and also to be in the presence of an insurmountable beauty I have never seen before. I think Klong Prao Beach on Koh Chang really is just about as close to heaven on earth as you can get and while I joked with my friends back in the States that they were never going to get me back because I was going to become an island beach hippie and never leave, I also really missed the kids of the Garden. I missed Belle. I missed Bee. I missed Bon. Half of my time at the beach was spent laying in the sand or floating in the water thinking about absolutely nothing while the other half was spent meditating on some of the thoughts I have had over the past few months but have not put words to. Most of these thought had to do with the kids.

I wondered whether Ying had ever seen the ocean before. I wondered if Wansai knew how to swim. I wondered if Bee fully understood what it means for him to have HIV. I wondered if he knew the ways in which it is passed and the precautions that need to be taken to prevent the spread of it to others. I wondered if Bon has ever told any of his best friends at school that he has HIV. I wondered if Prio has ever received stigmatization at the hands of those that know she has this disease. I wondered if Nonnie, the only child in the Garden without HIV, understands why all of her friends and her parents take medicine at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every day and why she does not have to. I wondered if Belle has ever gotten angry towards her now-deceased mother or the world for being born with a disease in which she had no responsibility for but will forever incite others to believe she practiced unsafe sex or used a dirty needle while taking drugs. I thought about how difficult and more anxiety inducing dating, an already difficult and anxiety inducing construct, will be for Bon. I hoped that Bee would have the courage to tell his future girlfriends that he is infected with HIV before they are sexually active. I wondered when is the appropriate time to tell someone you have a sexually transmitted disease like HIV. I questioned what I would do if someone I started seeing and someone I really started to like told me they had HIV. Even knowing all the ways to prevent the spread of transmission, there is still that risk. I wondered if that would that be a risk worth taking. I wondered if this is going to be the thought process of every boy Prio and Wansai date. I tried to put myself in the shoes of Ying and Belle. If I had HIV, I would hope that someone would be able to love me regardless of the disease. I wondered if Bon and Bee believe they are worthy of love. I wondered if I was being completely paradoxical and selfish to say I would hope someone could love me even if I had HIV in the same breathe of saying I did not know if I would be able to date someone with HIV.

For the past few years I have believed that I wanted to become a pediatric health psychologist. Unlike an adolescent psychologist, a pediatric health psychologist works with sick individuals to prevent or manage mental illnesses that have appeared as a result of their disease or illness as well as creating strategies to cope with living with a disease. If I were working with patients with HIV, most of the questions I pondered at the beach would be questions I would be working through with them in our sessions. Many days, it pains me that I cannot have deep, meaningful conversations with the teenagers on topics such as these because I just do not have the Thai vocabulary or comprehension level to discuss such things.

However, it is on days when I practice basketball chest passes with Bon and he teaches me the local language of Isan that I remember that right now, in this season of my life, I am not here to be a counselor or a psychiatrist. I am here to be a friend. A sister. The head that gets pegged with a basketball way too many times because Bon hasn’t quite understood the “chest” part of chest pass. But it’s okay, I still love him. A little lightheadedness and a few bumps on my temple aren't going to let me turn my back on my best friend.