Letter to Social Media, December 2017
The title above could be the title of a documentary. I once considered shooting one during my week-long stay in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I am going to meet Nghia, the native-born Vietnamese woman I’ve romantically bonded with across 22,000 kilometers of ocean and land. Nghia (pronounced nyae – ah) and I have never met in person.
We Did Not Connect Through A Dating App
I do not subscribe to any “Meet Asian Singles” websites. Tinder, Plenty Of Fish, OKCupid, Match, and other mobile phone dating apps have long been deleted from my phone. I had tried them all and I’d given up on even trying to date.
I was completely focused on my creative work. I’m a writer, filmmaker and producer. I had an action script to outline and write with my producing partner, Ramona; I had a Christmas script to co-write with Michael, I had a kick-ass science-based sci-fi reality competition show to create, and of course, there is a big social media personality Ramona and I are nurturing for TV.
I had a shit-ton of things to do!
Then Nghia and I were introduced through her younger cousin (aka niece) Tina, someone I’d worked with for two years in Little Saigon (Westminster, CA).
My Renewed Faith In Relationships
I proudly and loudly proclaim that Nghīa has renewed my faith in relationships. All the things I once romanticized about relationships had disappeared along with my marriage. Suddenly, with here, I was getting rose-colored-glass glimpses of the way I used to be.
At that time the word was slowly coming out about my long-distance romance with a woman from a socialist country. My friends started asking questions about the validity and legitimacy of our relationship.
Of course, they would, only because she’s from Vietnam [eye roll].
I routinely hear statements and warnings such as…
- It’s a scam
- She wants papers
- She only wants a green card
- How much money are you getting to marry her
- Make her come to the USA first
- You’re moving too fast.
This list goes on and on, but it’s the same boilerplate messages people hear and repeat. Most of my friends and colleagues had no personal knowledge of an international relationship. It was only something they had heard stories about.
Most of my friends were, quite frankly, ignorant.
However, on the other side of the coin I have friends who trust me, trust my judgment, and simply want the best for me. I received many congratulatory messages that continue to warm my heart.
I confidently assured any naysayers and doubting Toms that there isn’t a question they can ask that I haven’t already asked myself a million times.
I mean, seriously, I’m smitten, but I’m not stupid. Is this unorthodox? Absolutely. Unusual? Most definitely. But unheard of? Of course not.
Michael, a good friend and fellow writer in Arizona, continued to remind me to focus on the positive. As an old romantic, I know that love follows no guidelines or rules. Love is its own thing. You cannot package it neatly in a square box.
Anh Yeu Em (I Love You)
“Anh yeu em” means I love you and that phrase means everything and ALL things, as it should. For example, despite the time difference and the distance, Nghia and I speak more often than some couples who live together.
We video chat in the morning as I prepare for work and she prepares for bed. We text all day while we are at work. And occasionally we’ll have quick WiFi phone calls. We video chat again as I prepare for bed and she’s at work.
Recently, Nghia and I went on a social media investigation. We scrolled through millions of lines of text messages in Facebook Messenger to pinpoint the day she first texted, “I love you,” unsolicited.
We found it. It’s now added to our calendar.
We had fallen in love over text messages, WiFi calls, and video chats. Ironically, we’d fallen in love when loving someone 14,000 miles away couldn’t have been further from each our our minds. And, loving a foreigner was the absolute last thing Nghia ever imagined for herself.
To this day she accuses me of using “evil magic” to get her to fall in love with me. Things have escalated in the most beautiful and amazing ways. Every day I tell Nghia that she’s given me yet another reason to welcome being in love again.
Every day we have another moment of sharing and the raw honesty that brings us closer. Every day we let more of our guards down, you know, those instinctual gatekeepers that jump up to protect our previously broken hearts as soon as they sense, “Danger Will Robinson!”
#ldr: The Inevitable Jump To Conclusions
Long Distance Relationships often make people around you crazy. Everyone has an opinion of your life, even when they don’t have a worthwhile relationship to compare and contrast. It gets annoying.
I remember when Nghia and I first began our discussions of love and commitment. Nghia was cautious. Physically, I was a stranger to her, a man multiple continents away who had stolen her heart.
It’s funny. Many of my friends and colleagues jump to conclusions demanding to know if I carefully scrutinized Nghia, yet they never discuss a woman’s right to put the man through a vetting process. There are horror stories from both sides.
How could Nghia be sure I wasn’t just some charlatan in romantic disguise? American arrogance would have us believe that every foreign-born person would do and say anything and everything to come to America. It is as if national pride exists nowhere but in America. It’s preposterous.
Before we met, Nghia was content and satisfied to live a full life in Vietnam. She had a plan for her career that did not include falling in love with an American and moving to the USA. She was a manager at an international shoe company that designed footwear for Adidas, Reebok, and UnderArmor, among others. She was also taking advanced English classes to further her career.
A Natural Male/Female Relationship is a Welcome Disruption
I came along and disrupted Nghia’s plans. She was never looking for a quick route to US citizenship. I wasn’t looking for a ready-made servant to be at my beck and call.
We were open to something more substantial in our lives and found it in each other.
When I asked Nghia to come to America she agreed to turn her life upside down, leave her parents, her siblings, her niece, her job, her staff, her classmates, and friends to come to have a life with me.
However, I promised to visit Vietnam first so we could meet in person and see if there were sparks in real life. No more hugging the computer, no more blowing kisses at the screen. We would hug and kiss in person.
Nghia disturbed the still-born waters of bitterness that lie within me. I was nearly dead inside. What little life there was inside me that survived was resuscitated and awakened by Nghia.
I had turned away from filmmaking, but that passion too was revitalized. I often recorded our video chat sessions and it occurred to me that documenting my trip to Vietnam would be an amazing way to celebrate our relationship.
I planned a trip to Vietnam. That country will be the first stamp on my passport. It was also going to be my first trip outside of the US since I was in the US Marines poised on a ship off the coast of Panama in 1988 during the 1985-89 Noriega conflict.
Little did I know this trip would change my life in many more ways.
(more to come)
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