The Long Journey

I am in transit. I mean this physically, but there is no escaping the metaphor of such an idea for me. While I departed Melbourne for Singapore this morning and head off to Toyko and Seattle tomorrow, the transition really began early this morning with the realization that I can be a total and complete brat, but let's give that a little context, shall we?

I started out on this journey for many reasons, in search of a bigger world, to explore the international yoga scene, to seek out work, to develop more love for myself and to cultivate more trust for the world around me. There were many unknowns at the start of this trip and a lot of fears I had to face along the way.

I've never been to any of these countries before. I honestly don't know a single person who lives in these places and barely know anyone who has been to them. I was highly uncertain about the status of my romantic life and a bit uncertain about my ability to cope with it all, but I had to do it and I knew I'd be the better for it. Or, it would kill me.

Before I left I had a conversation with a dear friend and told her that I really looked forward to the transformative process, of stepping off the plane and knowing with every inch of myself that whatever was about to happen was beyond my control and irreversible. Owing to this I reasoned that I would be forced into shedding some outdated notion of myself that had been hanging on for far too long. Thank god.

The thing was that I didn't really know what this notion was. I only knew that it had been slowly falling away for a while and needed that one little last push to be complete. I looked forward to it's arrival, whatever it was. My dear friend lamented that those kinds of breakthroughs seemed to occur less and less with age. I felt disappointed by this, but relieved all the same and proceeded to go about my trip in my own, singular way. I explored the places I arrived in with great curiousity, I struck up conversation with just about anyone I met and everything seemed pretty hum-dee-dum until I arrived in Australia - as you may recognize from my last post.

All of a sudden everything was different - I wasn't alone in my own perfect bubble, I wasn't in charge of what happened when, I was in relationship, intimately, with another person and I resisted it, tooth and nail. If you've ever been in a relationship that was going south you know how easily it is to expect things to be a certain way. Well, two ways actually. From one side you hope that things will be as good as they once were and from the other side you fear that they'll be as bad as you last left them, which doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot of options. If it isn't one, it's got to be the other. We repeat our own history.

I've been doing it for years, especially in the context of my romantic relationships. It mostly involves feelings of being under valued, dissatisfied and angry. This isn't news for me. I already knew this and I already had pinpointed very distinct reasons why I felt this way, which involved my (you know) family, childhood and upbringing. I don't blame my family, I wholeheartedly believe they did the best they could, I just had yet to figure out how to do the best I could.

So I had a pretty awful time in Australia. I fought with my boyfriend, who is probably the most easy going guy in the world, everyday. I repeatedly told myself that we did not work, that he wasn't interested in even the simplest of things that interested in me, that we have nothing in common, that we have no connection and that we have no business being together. I went in wanting to prove that he couldn't love me the way I want to be loved and I ended up not letting him love me in any of the ways that he does. But the thing is that he hasn't stopped loving me and I only find myself loving him more. In the moments when I actually stop resisting what and who and how we are, I feel really, really solid about us.

So for my last evening in town we went out to the pub with a friend of his. It was awkward, I felt uncomfortable and I didn't want to feel that way any longer, so I left. I walked around for an hour in frustration and eventually ended up at another pub where I had a really engaging conversation with a blues guitarist I may never meet again. I went home. My guy was concerned and disappointed. I was indignant. We fought.

Then, somewhere between the closing of my eyes, the dawning of the morning light and him telling me things about myself I didn't want to hear for the 1,000th time, I awoke to the fact that he is actually spot on. I can be insufferable. I am childish and cruel and unreasonable and with him, I am all of these things. The ugliest part is that for so long I blamed him for all of this. I believed that he brought out the worst in me, when actually he just brings out the truth in me. If I wasn't an insufferable brat, he wouldn't be able to draw that out. Ever. But I am and he does - again and again and again.

What strikes me most about this revelation is that in the process of setting out to expand my world and love myself more I ended up face to face with some of the gnarliest bits of myself. And while at first glance it may appear that I arrived at the exact opposite end of the spectrum I was aiming for, I don't feel that way at all.

I know that sometimes the only way to reach the other side is to walk on up to those horrid demons, trust that they are merely ghosts and step right on through.