Red Bull, Kit Kats and The Holy Monks

 Kit Kats and Holy Breath: Getting Tattooed inthe Cambodian JungleIn Cambodia I found myself sitting cross-legged in front of a monk, spilling my entire life like it was a confessional booth and I was trying to break some kind of Catholic record—every heartbreak, every blackout, every bad decision wrapped in a bow of desperation and handed over to this serene man who probably heard worse things before breakfast.He listened without interrupting, nodded at the right moments like he was cataloguing my damage into some spiritual filing system, and then calmly picked the sak yants—the ancient sacred tattoos that would protect me in the future, designs that had been protecting people for centuries before I was even born, before my trauma existed, before I knew I needed protecting.I didn't argue, I didn't question, I trusted, and I want to be clear here: I wanted to respect their culture, I really did, but this could've gone sideways fast considering I was putting my entire back in the hands of someone I'd just met and relying on translation through broken English, scribbles and hand gestures, and for all I knew I could've ended up with my entire spine covered in ancient Khmer script that translated to "I love chicken fried rice" or "this tourist is a dick" or worse, "subscribe to my channel."But I trusted anyway, maybe too much but that's part of becoming spiritually elevated I was learning: pain, you're either gutted emotionally or—in my case—you let a monk jab you with a bamboo stick for eight straight hours in one sitting with no numbing cream, no breaks, no mercy, just Kit Kats and Red Bull to keep me alive and conscious while my back turned into a roadmap of pain and protection.

And here's the thing—I'd brought the strongest numbing cream available, the kind that could probably numb a small elephant, slathered it on thick before we started, but it did absolutely nothing, like the universe looked at my Western attempt to bypass discomfort and said "cute, but no, you're doing this the real way."Eight hours of having ancient symbols carved into my spine with a bamboo needle attached to a long metal rod, the monk tapping it rhythmically like he was sending morse code directly into my nervous system, and me sitting there trying not to scream or pass out or embarrass myself in front of the small audience of monks who had gathered to watch this white guy get spiritually rearranged one puncture at a time.The pain wasn't like getting a regular tattoo where the machine buzzes and numbs you into a kind of meditative trance—this was sharp, deliberate, intimate, like the universe was personally introducing itself to every nerve ending in my back and saying "hello, we need to talk about some things, and you're going to feel every single word."

I started to understand that the numbing cream failing wasn't an accident, it was the point—I had toendure the pain to be part of this ancient ritual, to earn the protection I was seeking, to prove tomyself and the universe and these monks that I was willing to sit through discomfort without anescape hatch, that I could finally stop running from what hurt and just be present with it.

When it was over I thought: great, I survived, shower and a meal and bed, done, I've earned myspiritual merit badge and can now return to normal life.

Nope.

The monk walks back in holding a moped helmet and says "Let's go" in that calm way that suggeststhis is completely normal and I should have been expecting it.

"Go where?!" I squeaked, still bleeding and vibrating from sugar and caffeine, my back screaming,my brain trying to process what fresh hell this was about to become.

Turns out the tattoos were only Step One, Step Two involved swinging by multiple 7-Elevens topick up offerings—oranges, incense, cigarettes—and I mean I couldn't stop this journey midwaythrough, I'd already committed, but with no translation skills and no clue where we were going