Indian Therapy - Ladakh

Coming out of my first month of intense learning, going to a far away place in the high Himalayas, starting to process it all, to integrate it into my later version of myself, my new host asks me to tell him something about me. He wants to talk to me. The feeling is familiar. Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to process? He shows me the map to get around in Ladakh, to be independent. “I need time alone, for myself” I say. “I have to process.” He asks a question, he’s getting an answer. All on a sudden I start pouring like a waterfall. I hear myself telling him how I’m processing the last weeks that I’ve met this guy, how complicated it is to understand such a different world, such a different culture, how I tried to adapt but from the first moment he talked about love when he at no point even knew or tried to get to know who I was. “I can’t just go to random people on the street and tell them that I love them. What do you love about a person if you don’t know them? It’s like a cry for help, a little boy running through the world looking for love, begging for it to heal his broken heart. But how can you love when you didn’t heal your own pain, your own heart? How can you give something that you don’t have, no matter if materialistic or energetic? No matter if money or love? If you go out there with a broken heart, trying to get a partner, a person who loves you, you’re a beggar. You’re trying to get from another person what you don’t have. How is that fair? That is only selfish and therefore the opposite of love. Trying to get the energy, attention and care from someone else to cure your own pain. This cannot lead into a true partnership on eye level but only to a temporary deal where one tries to take care of the other person’s pain but this cannot work in the long run as no one can heal your hurt, except yourself. And so if we don’t heal our own pain, look at our own wounds, we all run through the world like beggars with open hands, looking for the love we cannot give ourselves. What a broken world. A world of beggars.” I keep going like this. [While I’m writing this because the Universe is listening ALWAYS as if I’ve called it, my latest beggar just mentioned, comes to sit with me. I’m writing, no matter what I told him, he’s still trying. I explain the same thing to him.]

“How am I supposed to split myself into a hundred pieces when everyone talks to me, says the same thing to me every day? It’s not fair. I’m only one person and every person who speaks to me is egocentric thinking about himself. How is that fair? It burdens me. It gives me the feeling every day that I can fulfill no one’s expectations or wishes.” As I say it out loud I feel something inside of me resonating. Expectations. I am not here to meet anyones expectations, especially not stranger’s. But for some reason, it does something inside of me. I feel some sort of pressure, of needing to comply with what other people expect of me. To function. Functioning. My shadow. My fear of being rejected, feeling unwanted, unwelcomed, unloved in this world. My instinct for survival. From early childhood I know these feelings. They are familiar. Being rejected, feeling lost and alone in this world. And so I expect the same from others. When they don’t fulfill my needs or expectations I get upset. 

Because the Universe is still listening it’s sending me the same person outside, putting me to the test about what I’ve learned during the last week. He sits down across me again and starts talking while I’m trying to eat my Momos. “So last night.” I look at him. He points his finger at me. I say: „No, I always have me wherever I go, it’s not the last night”. Of course I’ve tried this kind of communication before which is naturally going nowhere as he’s  too self involved in his own mind and as in ninety percent of the times before cannot take a hint. I look at him: “I’m only a customer. I don’t see a problem. I said I want to be alone.” That was the third time. He understands. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” It still costs me energy. Not even little. It’s like a small torture inside telling people to get away from me since I would love to welcome everyone at all times with open arms but… Not anymore when I am being ignored in my words. This I learned from the last weeks. I will not try to give out my energy to people anymore who are unwilling to do the same for me by just listening to what my needs are or even ignore them. This is already boundary number one crossed. 

I’m proud to manage to speak up for myself from the beginning this time and walk away from the situation right away. I take control over my actions in my own best interest, respecting my own needs. How could anyone else if I don’t? 

Trying to set my boundaries but not completely pushing through, displaying inconsequence in my words and actions has been my downfall in relationships over many years. Not finding the courage to pull through and walk away from people and situations consistently when I feel they’re doing me wrong, not respecting my words has most of the times had the same outcome. Instead of taking seriously what’s been said, our subconscious mind has learned that words are meaningless as we stay even when we threaten to leave. Words and actions contradict. No integrity. This inconsistency between words and actions in my benevolence of trying to bring out the best in someone, give them the chance to unfold their true potential, I made myself untrustworthy, noncredible. “Give me some credit sometimes instead of showing off to everyone else how great you are, degrading me, my light, all I am.”  I was complaining not only once. Now I can see how this exact word was what he didn’t feel he needed to give me, no matter how much I asked for it because I wasn’t leaving. Some words of apology, behaving according to what I’d said many times before for half a day, finding some words to cherish me, seeing my light and thanking me for all my open and kind heart, was all it took to make me stay. Making me feel wanted, special if only for a few moments, was all it took. 

He accepts me completely for who I am even in the darkest moments. I thought when he said that he even appreciated me when I got angry, upset and frustrated about his behavior, using my fists, yelling, screaming at him, when I really didn’t like my own behavior anymore that had not come out in a long time. When truly he was the very one bringing it out of me in the first place. Facing, blindness, manipulation. Only today I understand the interconnection between my behavior and his reactions towards me. Feeling seen and even appreciated for a “dark” part of myself that only a person who does not see or understand me at all, can bring out in me, in his own self-centered actions, is a paradox in itself. Madness. A feeling that also arouse inside of me when our fights got out of hand. Like a vicious circle I couldn’t identify where it started and how to end it. 

Now I can understand. It starts once I let people cross my boundaries. Daily life interactions that I have always taken for granted, people speaking and listening to each other, having conversations on eye-level, wanting to understand one another, are a rare exception around here. Already the first moments of communication with a new person can overstep what I find essential in social interactions. Looking at the other person when speaking to them, facial expressions, mimic, looking each other in the eyes, gesture, listening, asking questions. Maybe having a friendly smile on your face when you speak to them. The features I consider the basics in human interaction are missing widely here. Every day I feel how I get more tense, more unrelaxed, more grumpy and ignoramus. I become a person I don’t want to be regarding daily interactions with people. I don’t hear as much anymore, I don’t look at people, I don’t smile, I don’t react when people talk to me. 

Standing in front of a shop to get ice cream, being ignored and stepped over by two Indians, I just swear and leave. I get annoyed. Sitting in a restaurant on a table, not being looked at or being looked at and…nothing. Like there is no reason for my existence, no reason for me to show up at places. Not in restaurants, not in shops, in front of counters or when I show up in an office. Smiling doesn’t help. You’re still like a ghost. Only stepping on their toes, speaking up loudly with your request into their face will maybe make them notice you or react to you. Now here goes the next part. Whatever the request, the first most common reaction is an empty look on their face and a wiggly head. Yes, no, maybe, I don’t know what you’re saying, I don’t care. You never know what’s going on in their head. It’s still as if they weren’t with you. I can’t count the times I’ve been to restaurants asking: „do you have juice? Do you have salad? Do you have coffee?“. Reaction: Blank face. 

Someone taking the initiative to approach you would be a completely unthinkable move, asking if you need help or why you are in the place that you’re in (unless of course they want something from you). Let’s call it kindness, care or even hospitality. Nothing I’ve experienced so far. For me after traveling many other countries this is a huge change I can hardly get used to, even after five weeks. This way of communication most of the times goes against my nature of approaching people openly with a smile in my face, trying to find common ground or just have a mutually functioning interaction. I cannot even call it communication, as many times the two parties involved, find no connection. 

I either have to learn to identify the people who are too far away from my reality, my heart and my mind to even make an effort of looking at me while talking, approaching me in kindness or share a smile with me and step away early enough not to waste my effort and get hurt. Or I will have to find enough motivation to become part of their perspective to get to know them and cut off any interaction that is becoming too personal so it can hurt me, lose my core values or act in a way that I don’t identify myself with. 

No matter my decision, spending time with people who are not willing or able to broaden their horizon or change their perspective in any way because they’re too deep into their own background of identity, drain me over the long run, so I may want to find a long term solution to stay sane and happy in my every day struggles. 

That’s what I thought. But no. Isn’t there another way? It cannot be the solution to stay alone with my values and run away or adapt to all and everything I experience. The harmony will be found in acceptance. Accepting others for who they are without having to change my values. Accepting it all. Balance. Harmony. It seems so far away. Mirror. Am I in harmony with myself? Will I not be able to accept everyone when I start accepting myself completely with all I am? 

The first help comes around, when I run into the first Western European woman, who seems to have a similar mindset and soul. Luckily running into each other when she was about to leave and I only arrived, our energies right away connect, struggling the same struggles; even after only four days she’s hit her emotional limits. „The first day it was even hard for me to find the courage to go to a shop to buy something“. I understand. I feel it deeply. The most simple things in every day life that seem so normal to us, becoming a real challenge once you feel like an alien from another planet. When every step requires an awake and energetic mind, a positive mindset and an open heart, the daily routines become a hassle. 

We almost fall into each other’s arms, meeting like this; both having sent a wish to the universe to finally find a friend in this vast foreign country. Serendipity. 

The same day my sweet lovely friend from Srinagar tells me he will come to see „his love“. Finally it seems the timing is on our side. One week has passed since I said bye to him. Making sure there’s no misunderstanding, I tell him he should not come for me, because of me or after me but that he should come for himself. I don’t want to „lose“ another person after I finally had to block my long term trial relationship. It felt wrong but he just couldn’t respect my request to leave me alone. 

Two hours I wait for my friend at the bus stand. The sun is setting, I’m getting cold and hungry. Indian style. 

After two hours one guy approaches me. I’m sitting in front of the office, the woman just closed. „Mam today the office is closed. You can come back tomorrow.“ I laugh. 

After more than two hours my friend gets dropped off somewhere in the middle of the street, taking us again over 30 minutes on the phone to get to one another. My mood is dropping accordingly, down into the basement. Finally we eat late and go to the hostel to get rest. Nevertheless I get a warm feeling, hugging him, looking into his deep, dark eyes, smiling. I was excited for what’s to come. 

The next day we get ready to leave. Packing everything, grabbing some things from the city not to be completely helpless in the remote mountains. Trying to get everything we need and a few things my new friend was asking me for, I could feel again how I get upset about being the responsible one, when he’s representing my stereotype of choosing men, not caring much about bringing anything, even forgetting about the only one thing that I had asked him for. An ATM. Arriving early at the bus station we run around to five different ATMs which none of them has cash as we’re running late. „Lina, this is India. The bus never leaves on time“. I look at him. I’m sure the public bus was leaving on time. But who am I to tell? The „knowing it all behavior“ in a completely new environment, triggering me. Completely unprepared and ignorant, behaving like he knows what he’s doing. 

Returning five past three, we find ourselves in front of an open spot. I look at him. „I’m pretty sure this is where the bus was“ I say. All my valuables, my backpack inside. The bus left. „Find a solution“ I say. I’m upset that even with him I get the feeling that he thinks he knows more than he does, not even trying to get information but acting on his own „knowledge“. He tells me to wait and goes back to fix the situation. Ten minutes later a car pulls up next to me with some people inside. Meanwhile since the morning I had to block and unblock the people who owe me hundreds of euros. I’m mad. It’s all going in circles. So frustrating. I thought I had left that part in Kashmir. I left Kashmir but Kashmir hadn’t left me as I had to experience that day since the morning from different angles. Still fighting with the same issues on top of all. I’m calm but annoyed. We catch the bus and hop on to get to our first adventure together. In the bus we’re laughing, taking pictures and videos, hugging, synchronizing. Our bright side. The two sides of struggling to manage daily life together without hurting the other one and and laying carefree in the grass and cuddle, laugh and kiss, like time would never end. „I own time“ I say to him. I believe it. 

Still my learning lessons are not to end as I’m being confronted with my shadow of care and responsibility. Having given out a lot of my heart, my care and my will to adapt, following my nature of shape shifting over my life, especially in the last weeks, I invite the same lesson back into my life, in a milder form in the shape of my sweet love. Had he helped me in this new environment of great challenges, being my friend and support, does another side of him come to light when going on this journey together as it feels more like I’ve taken a child. The side that I’ve experienced deeply in an ever returning way for over a month, wishing to have left it behind, not for the first time. I did not. I took it with me. The egocentric way of life, the difficulty to listen or to look after the person next to you. The behavior of knowing it all, therefore being deeply asleep for the outside world. Not always but especially traveling in a group I can see that this is a completely new environment for him. However instead of asking when he doesn’t know something or admitting that he doesn’t know, he keeps walking around as if he’s understood life. The mountains such an amazing teacher. 

The situation again throws me into my all so well known patterns. Dealing with values, dealing with my role in this world and having to fight for care, love my attention the way I wish to receive it. Having to organize around us, him not listening or just being an accessory is driving me mad. The familiar feeling of having a projector of the surrounding next to me, returning. The inability to reflect what he’s been consuming in his life, missing the critical thinking, only reflecting back whatever he’s heard, seen, read or learned, unfiltered, putting it into all stereotypes he knows. 

I can feel how he’s pressing all my trigger points from the last weeks and even years that I find it hard to control my upset mind about him. Feeling forced into the role of being a mother or teacher that I’ve told him I don’t want to take on. 

Breathing the fresh air, working with my mind I cannot let go of the anger that once again I’m with a person who prioritizes himself before me and our small group. A person who cannot stand up for his mistakes, a person who has a different perception of himself that leads him to act in an all-knowing attitude with no awareness for his actual understanding. This childish behavior of him only taking care of himself for whatever is important to him. [My anger perception]

The next times he approaches me are again about him. It’s just the right thing to do to pour oil into the fire, my fire. 

Already the first time he approaches me I tell him that he may only speak to me again when it’s something concerning me. When it’s something that’s not about him. But he does not get it. He keeps doing the same thing, not asking once what’s wrong with me what I had expected him to understand in the first place. Expectations. My topic. Not having enough money due to his ignorance and unawareness fueling me up. He keeps living in his world, walking in his city walk style in his sneakers, smoothly moving his hand through his hair. Every move, every detail about him, making me more angry. 

I try to focus on his kindness, all the things that made me feel drawn towards him but the last weeks are weighing on me too heavy. 

My inner struggle finally wanting to be seen, recognized, taken care of, without having to fight for it, overwhelming me. I feel deserving of being seen. I want it, I need it. 

When I sit down, my breath heavy from the ascent, replying to him that I need rest because my heart is beating fast as a mirror to his words, he again misses completely what I want and need. I look at him: „Why do you think I’m sitting here?“. I feel my energy drained. I want him to care. He walks away. Out of sight. He leaves me behind. It’s breaking my heart. I’m crying, sitting, trying to catch my breath, slowly following. They’re ahead of me, I can’t see them anymore. He would have left me there, not caring if I was ok. It feels unfair. Me caring for him, organizing all and everything, him not putting an effort (in that moment that I could see or feel), being left alone. 

I feel like I was dying and no one cared. My mind is going in circles. I could not accept someone next to me who would just walk away, when I sit somewhere in the middle of nowhere, struggling. 

I knew that we were too different to continue a long journey together. I feel I have to be honest enough to myself no matter how much I would love for it to be different and all sunshine to not make a similar mistake as in Kashmir. 

Later that evening when we finally arrive after our first day of hiking, I sit on the terrace in the most magical place of the Himalayas, the evening sun in my face, I feel save, blessed and held by the universe. I know all this is my own pain. My pain of wanting to be seen after all this time, expecting him to fulfill my needs, live to my standards, to care the way I want to be cared for. 

Overlooking that only 24 hours before we were sitting in fairytale land, on a rock in the river, the flowers over our heads, giggling like teenagers, hugging, kissing, holding each other. „I have never felt anything like this for any other girl. Every kiss, each hug makes me full, satisfied. I need nothing else.“ I feel the vibration in every touch, every kiss, I cannot let go of him. My skin feels electric. The lightness of being with him, let’s me forget everything. If only we had stayed in that space, nothing could have happened to us up to the point of becoming sexually active. Moving to bed his inaccurate or subjectively favorable self perception of his skills, calling himself a „playboy“, turned out to be true in the literal sense. As for me these two words fit exactly what he had been displaying over the time spent together. When things came to reality, into practice, his words became meaningless as they portrayed more of who he wanted to be than what he truly is. 

A common misperception -in my experience- of building an identity not based on our true personality, skills, behavior and actions but build from our wish to be persona. Likewise as I’ve experienced this widely around here, also my sweet love takes these parts inside of him or more outside of him, painting a picture of himself with words that he would love to bring into existence, practice, reality; not recognizing that this is not (yet) who we are but maybe who we want to become. 

This way of acting has been causing me all my frustration since I can think. Missing integrity, authenticity. The gap between words and actions. Theory and practice. A mind trick. 

It makes us irresponsible, unreflective, blind for who we truly are and therefore incapable of becoming this idealized version of ourselves that we wish to be.  Seeing this, breathing the air next to him, unable or better to say in no position to preach him, teach him or educate him about what I see, let alone tell him to be different, making me swing between practicing acceptance and patience towards his personality and expressing what I feel when I cannot take more of his self flattering attention seeking attitude. 

Knowing it’s my shadow, my own blind spots, my pain hiding. 

Having the warm evening sun with me to soothe my anger, my hurt and longing to be loved, breathing the fresh air of the Himalayas deeply into my lungs, I try my best to let my thoughts form into words, let them go through Rumi‘s three gates - are they true, are they necessary, are they kind?

He’s sitting next to me, listening. As good as he can, I can see he’s putting effort although his instant reactions are infused by rejecting what I say. Almost every reaction contains a negating particle. I reflect to him that his mind is reacting in the attempt to protect his identity, rejecting instinctively what I say. We’re calm. He’s open, he’s hurt, he tells me he loves me and that he’s sorry for hurting me. This is why I love him too. This is why I respect and appreciate this boy to my core because I can see how he’s fighting for me, for us, to understand. He respects me so highly that he wants to learn, even when it’s hard, even when it’s causing pain, even when he’s getting angry himself. „You know I got angry about you today too when you didn’t want to listen, I just wanted to make you smile but I can’t say anything to you. I love you so much so I say nothing. When I get angry usually I will say things to people, I will react but with you I cannot. I don’t know why“. 

Somehow these words do something to me. For this to be true it needs quite some self control, it needs the motivation to put himself behind. A behavior that I did in opposite not see in him but only his shiny self portrait. „You know Lina, I really love you. I’ve never felt anything like this for another person. Not even for my ex girlfriend.“ No matter how I try to talk him out of this as me being an empty space for his dreams to project them on, he is convinced of his love for me. I can feel it too. 

Who am I to define what love is or what it looks like manifested? Are there rules?

This night we reconnect in respect, in our hearts, in understanding for the other person. He’s touching my hands, kissing my face, my lips. My whole body wants to be with him, I feel glued to him, only want to hold him tight, feel his skin on mine, his soft cheek on mine. I wish I could melt into him. This physical attraction I don’t know how I could have denied it over all these weeks. 

Our bodies and minds rejoicing, the next day seems bright. I overlook all the time he takes in the shower, I tell him directly what I want, with more ease than I could have before. 

This day I act in love, not for education. This shift in energy brings us a whole day of butterflies, having our teenage summer days back, rolling in the grass laughing, hugging, kissing, holding hands,  cuddling, feeling our skin, touching our faces, walking around in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The golden Buddha above us, the cows eating the grass, my love looking into my eyes deeply smiling, touching my fingers again and again. „I love your hands“. It’s a picture perfect day for young lovers like out of a romantic novel. „…so you had to meet a beautiful German girl to come and see this beautiful place“, my Belgium friend says. She’s completely right. Not has he explored far out before. But for me…

However the peace doesn’t survive the next day. When the night arrives, the bed becomes our all too well known challenge. In his childlike move towards me that shows no passion, romance, empathy or curiosity for my body but only sexual arousal in the most primitive way, I don’t want to play along anymore. I’m over it. It’s our last night together. I was hoping for more closeness. For appreciation of our time together. 

These two sides between this sweet talk, his open heart and this superficial overestimated self esteem turning into failure from pressure, pushing me to my limits of trying. 

Unwillig. Capacity over. When he’s making also no move to be close to me the next morning but instead disappears into his favorite place for over an hour in the early morning, I know I need to get distance. We need to get distance. Distance that he’s been creating again and again before without noticing. A play between hot and cold, fire and ice, even if unconsciously. Sweet, long, electric kisses, melting into one another, the most romantic words of love and intimacy shifting into, self-involvement, unawareness, ignorance and absentmindedness. No sign I’m even in the same space as him. 

Before even having opened my eyes anger and frustration building up inside of me, no matter how hard I try to let it go. It’s his birthday. I behave, say nothing. Neither does he. Like the first day. My empty face, no communication, no hug, no look, no touch, no kiss, he does not seem to notice. As if everything was normal. It hurts. This two sidedness, this distance as if he had no empathy, no connection to me whatsoever, repeatedly irritates me. Makes no sense, assures me in my feeling that we should not spend more time together. 

Packing our things to go for the next day of our hike, he says: “I’ll take the bus, my legs hurt. I’ll see you in Leh”. His face empty, no questions asked, no information exchanged. He still notices nothing. For him all this seems perfectly normal communication. The right situation for me to pull through with my decision. “Great. Please give me my shirt. I do not want to meet you in Leh. It’s better we separate.” He interrupts me. He doesn’t know and can therefore not understand my reasons but as all these times before he thinks he knows it all, when he reacts without hesitation. “No no listen, you misunderstand. This has nothing to do with you.”  

Inside I’m losing it. Every time I feel like he thinks I’m stupid, like I do not have my own mind. But no, this egocentrism gives him no chance to even consider that this has been my own decision, before him, nothing to do with him taking a bus. 

We’re all getting ready to leave and again as the days before he shows no sign of interest in what what had happened. He does not look at me, he does not ask questions. It seems he missed that this was our last night that we could have spent intimate together, also that I just told him that this is goodbye. My pain is back. I feel no love. He just lets me leave, to another difficult hike, with no money, little food and the sun shining bright above us. 

What feels like crossing the desert, climbing the mountains, passing long trails and empty rivers, I feel a mix of relief, hurt and anger. It’s good that he’s not with me anymore but  I would have wished for it in a different way. I wanted a goodbye. A respectful separation in love, as we both deserve it. I wanted him to care, to show me that he will not just walk away, that his words weren’t empty, that he meant what he said. I could not stand this pain again as I’ve experienced it so many times before. These promises of love and care when the moment I don’t function and don’t do as the other person expects, they walk away. When I start standing up for what I believe, feel or need, I’m being left alone. My pattern, my pain, ever returning daemon. Choosing men who want my smile, my light and my care but not my all. 

Processing my pain at least it seems the connection to the universe is strong this day in every aspect. 

Our trek going meticulously great, even when hard in some moments. Being invited by a local family only shortly before we arrive in the final village, the first car picking us up, even before having passed it completely, we arrive still early back in Leh, completely exhausted but happy go lucky. 

“I reached” was the message I receive an hour before we arrive. All my thoughts circulating in the familiar pattern. HE has reached. Wow. He. In a bus, car, together with the Israeli. Instead of asking us -again- if we’re alive, where we are, when we arrive, if we could talk or any of that matter. Nothing. Same same. I congratulate him and keep trying to deal with my pain. 

At dinner I pour my heart out. “I hope he’s not in the same hostel” I say. But really I hope for the opposite. I wanted a good ending. A worthy one for the both of us. A happy one. 

Walking back to our place, I receive a message. He sends me a poem. As I know him. It’s beautiful. “I saw her”. I need nothing more. I only needed the first step from him. I’m I want to talk to him. Say goodbye to him. Hug him, kiss him, let him go. 

When I return to the hostel, he calls me. The connection is bad, I go downstairs. “Which room are you in?” He’s in the same place. I don’t believe it. Looking for me as I later get to know, he asks my friend if I’m angry. He comes down to sit with me. 

Everything is ok. He touches my hand. “I missed you. What happened?”  We reconnect. It’s easy. It always was. Spending the evening together as if nothing happened I get angry again. He calms me down. I seem to have come into a circle of fire. Even then he brings the cool to balance me. I appreciate him. I want to be near him. We need not have deep conversations if this is not in the cards for us (yet). All I need is his heart. „I just want to hold you tight“ are his last words before going to sleep. I feel the same. 

I wake up. I didn’t sleep well. It feels like my all energy has shifted. All I felt since going to bed, having an outside view on my behavior, was to apologize, to go and hug and kiss him, hold him in my arms. Make it all go away. Get him back to me. Love him completely without my judging. Feeling covered in shame about how I was trying to teach him how to behave, how to grow, how to be, when all I want is to be in his light being, his ease, living carefree into the day, enjoying his kisses, his touch, hearing him say: “Oh LINA LINA. I will miss your cheeks, your eyes, whenever I look into your eyes I get lost, your lips, your kisses, your neck. I love every part about you. I learned so much from you. I will miss everything. And what if I miss you too much?”

He comes downstairs some minutes after me. He needs to leave urgently the same day, for a customer. I feel like life has made its decision for us. For me. As I’ve wanted it the last morning in the mountains. Time to let go. I put on my clothes and accompany him to the bus station. “Today I will be with you wherever you go. We’ll spend a last day together, just us.”

When we finally sit to eat something, my heart is full of emotions, even until today, two days later. Full of carefree love, maybe physical attraction, I cannot say at the moment. Maybe care for this beautiful person, seeing his purity in what he calls deep, never felt before love for me. I set myself next to him, to be close to him, cover my face on his shoulder and cry. I feel shame. Shame and love and hurt and confusion. I don’t want to let him go. Physically, emotionally. Maybe because I need him, maybe because he saved my soul when I was alone in a land of strangers. Maybe it’s selfish. Or maybe I learn to love in new ways. Not because a person is like me, thinks like me, acts like me, is as responsible as me or as reflective as me but maybe for what the other person actually is. Accepting that person for who they are. 

Going through this last day with him, not knowing if we’ll ever meet again, enjoying every little detail, every moment, every breath, every word he says, every time our lips touch, every time he holds my hand in his, looking at it as if it’s the most beautiful hand he’s ever seen. “I will miss your tiny hands. Your smile. Everything oh Lina, I don’t want to go.” Every word feels like healing for my soul. 

Be empty of worrying. I love you Lina. He writes on my hand in Farsi. 

As I’m writing this I remember he wrote something in Urdu in my phone: I miss you so much for how you value yourself. There is no one like you. 

Again tears come out of my eyes. I do miss him. For whatever it may be. For the intimacy that I’ve missed so much, for him accepting me as I am, for his trust, his dedication to come see me, for his little gestures (cleaning my bottle, buying me an import apple, getting out to the shop for me when I need something, for writing me quotes, sending me poems, bringing me his favorite Rumi book…). “You’re my love.” My heart is still overflowing with bliss when I read or hear these words from his lips. 

When I finally drop him at the bus station after trying to breathe his all in, absorb his touch, his warmth, I can feel how hard it is for him to let me go. Again and again I hear him say Oh Lina Lina, what if I miss you too much?! You’re my love. Desperation in the tone of his voice. I feel his heart. Maybe it’s my own that doesn’t want to admit my own feelings. I see him going, he turns cold just for the last seconds, creating the distance he needs to leave. It must hurt. 

Letting him pick a card, revealing the shadow. “Only will you truly be able to love when you tear down the wall in your heart, trying to hide the shadow”. I wrote this. 

Now I wonder if I have a wall in my heart that doesn’t want to let love in. Looking for reasons why a person doesn’t fit into my life. 

Returning a poem to him yesterday, from the same book he sent me the poem the night before, his reply is breaking my heart: “Linaaa my love, I miss you so much. Can’t stop my tears after reading this. But no matter how far you are from me you are always close to my heart and from now I will love you more!”

What do I know about love? I’ve been asking myself this lately more and more while I have to block my first experiment from Kashmir once again who’s convinced of his love by not accepting my distance but pushing himself on me. 

Still swinging between frustration and acceptance. This seems to be the regular way of dealing with digital exchange. Either you’re open prey or you have to block the other person. „I miss you so much. I want to come see you.“ It wouldn’t stop now for over two weeks. 

Finding harmony between shape shifting, adapting to my surrounding and living my values without being overstepped, is still one of my biggest challenges. In between lies acceptance. Accepting everyone for who they are, does not mean that I have to change who I am. Accepting that not everyone had the same opportunities growing up, learning how to use their mind, how to reflect, how to be critical, how to form their own opinions on matters rather than just absorbing everything they consume, how to think outside the box, broadening our horizon, ask questions, look behind the obvious, behind what our society, culture, parents and media tries to tell us, how to take over responsibility for our own thoughts, words and actions, taking care, not only for oneself but also for the people around us; become aware of our own mind, watch it and use it instead of letting it use us. 

My expectations for people’s capacity of their mind, disappointing me when they don’t live up to my standards. Arrogance. Humbleness. One and the same from the other side. 

Natural at the same since hundreds and thousands of years ago humans were not traveling around the world in this pace and as far as we do today within only hours, diving into completely unknown cultures. People stayed in their tribes, their culture, their mindset, their world. No need to understand another one, connect to different ways of thinking let alone adapt to the unknown. 

All the same dealing with how our mind works, reflecting on our intake, watching our thoughts and actions, understand that our view is subjective, limited and filtered through our own backgrounds, experiences and upbringing, that we never see the world, situations or a person clearly but only through our own biased glasses, is a very privileged way of looking at life. No worry if I have enough food to eat, a bed to sleep in or parents who care for me. 

Not every person in every place, born into very different life circumstances has either the time or the capacity to wrap their head around such learnings as survival comes first; covering our basic needs for food, shelter and safety before cultivating an open, interactive, critical mindset. 

Within my mood swings I wonder about what draws me to my sweet love. Is it the need to be loved? Is it his heart and kindness? Is it me? Is it him? Is it the situation? How will I know? Often enough I thought I felt a connection when in the end I found that the other part needed me, admired me, learned from me and so I felt needed but wasn’t seen for who I am. A mirror of our needs. A deal. But no genuine love for who the other one truly is. 

„It’s better to walk alone than with the wrong person“. That I know. 

Now after these few days I am walking alone. Again. And it confuses me. 

I make strange places my home places, I said to him when I left. 

Two weeks ago when I arrived, I was almost the only white person around for a long time. Since I came to India. Now slowly the city is getting flooded with westerners which gives me a new strange feeling of being alone. They came together. They haven’t seen how it was only a few days ago and so I still feel like I’m isolated in my own world. 

This moment when I fall apart again because I realize my openness and goodwill didn’t help to face reality. The world of my sweet wasn’t as open as I’ve wanted it to be. I was blind. Putting my all out there again, in the struggle to want to open up someone’s view when there’s nothing to open up. Not for me anyways. My inner urge, my drive to broaden horizons, make people rise, heal and learn to connect the world in our hearts, to become one again, to support one another, makes me blind (in seeing the smallest potential as my biggest hope), unaccepting for when people live in a different world. 

Waking up in the morning all on a sudden a wave of religious extremist opinion on the part of my last Kashmiri friend starts. Completely unexpected and with such impact that it makes me tremble, my heart sink, cramping, my whole body going into emergency mode. Danger, betrayal, manipulation, darkness. My heart breaks. I cannot believe what I’m reading. […]I think we’re all here for some years in this world because I have a goal in my life that is to go to Jannah heaven. I already get an uncomfortable feeling. This is not good. I ask him what that means. 

That means I don't believe in this world I believe real life is here after. This is the way I live. 

My body even more alert, I hear the sirens howling. I don’t believe in this world. He doesn’t believe in this world. I guess I’m not real then, he is not, the beautiful mountains and experiences aren’t either. Our last weeks together, my struggles, my frustration, my anger about his disrespect, slowly the pieces are connecting. It hurts. I ask him if this is really what HE thinks or if this is only what he learned like I’ve asked him all these times before to take the courage to use his own mind, reflect instead of being a leave, floating around in the wind blindly repeating what he’s heard or seen somewhere like a lifeless wall. Unfortunately I cannot get through. The wall. As I know it. Blank. The brainwash. There’s only one truth. He tells me „WE give preference to REAL life…which is here after“. I feel like I’m talking to a member of a sect who’s been manipulated into the community for many years. I’m breaking inside. I’m dying. I feel I’ve lost him. I’ve never had him. I never saw him. All my effort to get to know him, now having that ghost right in front of me, explaining „real life“ to me. Lost. All battles lost. His soul lost. I feel anger, hurt, pain, frustration, disappointment, worry and sympathy. I cannot control all the different emotions arising at the same time. My little angel that I had hope for to explore life, experience the beauty, live, love and be truly fulfilled, born into a manipulative religion (at least in the way he’s writing about it, unreflective and imprisoned). He keeps using the pronoun WE. We learned this and we believe this. I tell him how sad I find this to not value life and just stick to a generations old belief instead of using your own mind, excusing himself. I cannot deal with it. 

First we don't take  ourselves as individuals we can't do whatever we want to do because we have some limits. And I believe this is the way you find peace in this world. Many people who came to islam find peace because before they didn't know what they were doing. He’s trying to educate me again about things as if they were specifically true for his belief, his tiny bubble, has he no idea how vast the world is and that any belief, not even only a religious one but also believing in the universe, science or your grandmother is truly the only anchor for our existence. Our belief what we’re here for. He wants to make it his OWN, his community. There goes the God complex again. His world, his tiny Kashmir Islam bubble is the ONLY real world. I guess then the whole rest of us world can go fuck ourselves. Too bad I didn’t get my reason and purpose to exist justified by him. 

Slowly my mood turns into blind rage, having this boy, living in his own bubble universe without having any courage or motivation to value life, ask questions, use his mind or heart to have the nerve to educate me about the Islam being the savior for our soul. He affirms again how the Quran is the guidance book and knows it all. My dear it will seem to you ignorant but this is the real life. I’m losing it. And again. The superior God behavior I’m done dealing with after these weeks of Kashmiri Islam. I feel he’s lost it completely. This arrogance that already drove me mad throughout our time together in the mountains. Speaking to me as if I was an uneducated little girl and only he and his manipulative sect know the „reality“, the „truth“ of the world. Stuck in a dark hole. Blind, prisoners and slaves of a piece of paper. No. A bunch of pieces of papers. Without islam there not any reason for your life. Why you are here? Wow. For me with every more word he’s writing I become more hurt, ashamed, degraded as I’ve felt it so many times before in his actions towards me. Taking away my life now, my existence, my dignity, my soul. Telling me that there is no reason for me to be on this planet since I’m not a part of his religion. [Editing it now two days later I cannot hold myself from laughing. The more often I read it the more funny it becomes. I’m pretty sure tomorrow I will feel very sorry].

All these weeks, almost two months seem fake. Everything a big lie. Nothing matters to him in this life. Not his life, not my life. All my screams, my cry outs to care for me now manifesting in the most painful way. No care. Because my existence is unworthy in his eyes. No need for me to be alive. Why would he even spend time with me then. The answer to this question makes it all even more painful because my soul has answered it so many times before already but wished for it again and again not to be true. Closing my eyes, trying to find peace, acceptance in how he is. Egocentrism. The core of this worldview. Playing god. He could at least use my existence for his physical boyish needs, rubbing his genitals against my body. Having some erotic pleasure for himself that will be hard to find in his community, similarly to my houseboat stay. 

I don’t want it all to be the same. I don’t want to be disappointed in my high expectations. I don’t want all the prejudices about Islam and Muslim religion to be confirmed (in a very tiny frame in Kashmir by the people I met). I don’t want to think in limited terms but after these two months, even my last friend turning out to be deeply sucked in to a far away planet, having no respect for any form of life, I’m breaking, falling apart. No matter how good I want, I cannot find respect for this way of dealing with the world. It seems my all energy is much more heavy than usually. 

I tell him how sorry I feel for this brainwash and that I hope he finds what he’s looking for. Of course since he’s the almighty one, he’s the only person (or maybe including his fellow companions from the Islam) who’s already been enlightened and found everything that everyone else is searching for in this life. The long way Buddha had to go, he doesn’t need. He’s been born at total peace thanks to the holy pages of the Quran which obviously is why the Islam is the only religion to be respected.  Anyone else in this world as I could learn from him is here for no reason. People of the Islam (most and for all him) are the only ones with a worthy existence because they’re only here temporarily and KNOW (since obviously they all have been there before and come back?????) that our existence in this life is just a stage not to be respectfully lived with all beings in love and connection but to get over it and finally get to the „real life“ afterwards. But of course because I’m a dumb ignorant woman from the west „darling“ I just have no idea about reality or the truth because only Muslim people do. 

I ask him to leave me alone with this. Having degraded my existence on this planet as a human being by not reading the Quran, and therefore my all being, not believing what he believes in, is the final straw. Close-minded I find not even a strong enough word for this world view, since it’s not only a world view, no opinion or perspective but a judgement over the entire humanity from a throne above everyone that he put himself upon. He suggests me to find purpose in my life through reading the Quran. 

I feel I never met this person before. Everything I ever said, shared with him, my thoughts, feelings and perspectives on life; that I find my purpose in life in growing and healing, how I want to connect people, to love, to find and create change in this world, to make it better place with less suffering, all my knowledge and emotions, my heart, my story, my all I am that I’ve shared with him in quietness and in trust, vanished, taken from me, like I was never part of his life, like I never met him, never existed, like I’m not even worthy. I truly never touched this planet since there’s no reason for my existence if I don’t follow blindly a piece of paper like he does. He made me a ghost, an inferior being like our meeting has never happened. 

It feels my pain knows no limits for having given my heart and my effort to someone who doesn’t believe I have a reason to exist in this world. 

Thank you for finally showing me your real face. I wish I would have known earlier so I didn’t have to waste my heart and energy. 

I want to write but I don’t. All my interpretation and view on this may totally be biased by all my emotions towards this boy and all my experiences throughout my time in Kashmir and beyond. The culture, the religion, their way of communication in the end too much for me to allow in my life. Too much disrespect, too much disconnection, too many hurt values. I overstepped my limits once again.

My body shaking, goose bumps, shivering I lie in bed putting on my second jacket, crawling under the blanket. My head like someone hit me with a baseball bat, my mind drifting and shifting, my body hot like fire, glowing all at the same time. Feverish. The physical manifestation of the emotions running up and down my spine, my heart, my chest. Hot and cold. Freezing and burning. A mirror. The perfect mirror of the last weeks. Of him. Towards me. His behavior, his words, his attitude, shifting from one side to the other contradicting. No consistency for my heart, my soul. No place to rely on, no shoulder to lean on, no arms to fall back into when I need them. Just magically disappearing unexpectedly. For me. I want to close my eyes. 

I look at his messages for the fifth time. Read them again. Try to create more distance. Go into his world. On his side, create space, room for what else it could be if it wasn’t what I felt. 

I read „My dear it will seem to you ignorant but this is the real life. Without islam there not any reason for your life. Why you are here ?“. The sentences that hurt me the most. That I find most offensive, most degrading and disrespectful to my person, my soul, me, Lina. All on a sudden it comes to me. If the statement wasn’t a statement but his point of view and the „you“ was impersonal then what was left of his words was a mere projecting of the holy book he’s following blindly like all the other things coming out of his mouth. The things he heard, saw, read and was taught throughout his life without reflecting them or giving any further attention, importance or notice to anyone else’s feelings or opinions. Nothing personal. Again only the egocentrism I already know from the Kashmiri attitude. Nothing more, nothing less. No outside view, no interest or even awareness that the words he used towards me have the potential hurt me, most likely would hurt me, may even put an end to our friendship or even worse, as it did to me. Destroying everything there was by his carelessness, by his selfcenteredness. Today I also find this extremely plausible. Unreflective and unaware as he is, he just wrote what came to his mind without any reason, stating what his religion is about, the rest is what people say and he was just coincidentally born into it. A book. The center of his life. Worth to disrespect all else. That’s all.

The circle is closing, the puzzle pieces becoming one complete picture, put together. Not one I would choose, still. Not one I appreciate. Not a way I would ever want to live blindly, as a prisoner of the past in a bubble but it’s only a different way to live and the reason my heart hurt for a bit. Because I live and breathe love and connection, communication, compassion and empathy. It’s the air I need to feel alive. To feel people‘s hearts, understand them, care for them, see them, love them. And I wish so much for the same. The same love and connection. I take things personal. I open my heart, I wish to be seen, to be understood, to be cared for. But who am I to ask for this? For him nothing is personal. Not this life, not him, not me, therefore not my heart or my pain. Maybe he is at peace. Being a part of a collective, of a community, feeling save. Rules. A book. Something you can touch, stick to, believe in, rely on. Always. Not like people. It doesn’t hurt you. Nothing can touch you. A comfortable way to live. No pain. No attachment, no fear, ah no fear, that’s what he once wanted to make me believe. If you put yourself above life, above humanity, then nothing can touch you. But also… nothing can touch you. I want to be touched. I want to be touched as much as I can. I want to feel, to connect, to live and breathe, to feel alive. Feel other people‘s hearts, even when it hurts. 

I guess admitting that my way of looking at life, wanting the most out of it, wanting to surrender, to experience, to go out of my comfort zone, to expand and learn, to reflect and become a different version of myself every day is first of all a very privileged perspective and second of all not the only valid way of living. Feeling so deeply hurt that over the last months I’ve been confronted with a culture and religion which doesn’t value what I live, putting myself out there in hope to be returned my effort, my energy and my love, from people to care for me in the same way to want to understand, see and connect with me, was an unrealistic dream in this world. It wasn’t an expectation that this limited beliefs and perspectives could live up to. 

The pain caused deep inside of my heart from being ignored, disrespected, overstepped, used and taken for granted is my own rooting in my expectations. In my belief of caring for one another, bringing compassion and empathy for the people around us instead of living a detached life focusing only on ourselves but not receiving it back. Seeing me drained, weak and sick after all these weeks, fighting to adapt, understand and accept the one important thing I have to accept is my own limitations. Again I am not a super human. I am a person who needs love, attention and care at times and in these times more than ever before having given out a bit too much to the wrong people. 

Another chapter that’s closed. A big lesson for me to be learned as every time and the feeling that I did all that I could have done and I now deserve someone to try to understand me. Someone to show an interest in me, care for me, see me and love me for all I am. 

Sitting at the bus station. Finally it’s time to leave. The last night again has put together a lot of levels of thoughts about the last days. Put them in a bigger sense. For me. What it is that I take from it. Bottom line after listening to me yelling at this guy in wild rage how he can dare tell me that I had no reason to exist without the Quran and that all that I’ve been telling him, sharing with him, was worthless as if I’ve never met him; is for me I shall rather be less understanding with regard to my own values. Be mindful with my energy according to who to dedicate it to and at the latest when I realize the other person is not willing to put an equal effort to understand me or even respect my life for who I am, step away without hesitation. Without giving chances over chances when I even need to yell to feel heard and this being „heard“ only lasting for the period of time to calm me down to then continue with their good old degrading, disrespectful, ignorant, childish, blind, godlike selfish kindergarten behavior. Also be mindful with the pretty faces, the physical attraction, also when needed to help over a lack of emotional, human connection; it may be better to separate the both if possible to not in the end be so negatively overwhelmed, slapped in the face by who that person truly is and that the physical attention was all the other person needed, yes needed that is the right word, I was needed for their personal convenience and even trying to fight for my own personal share that I felt I needed (intimacy) wasn’t enough to neutralize all the emotional heartbreak it had caused me. Having such a sensitive soul I don’t know how many times I will have to learn that it is not to made deals with but only loved fully, wholly and completely. As long as I go into these unequal deals where I lose parts of myself, serving them boys as their mother or sex toy with no feelings, I will be left hurt, kicked in my face for all the connection I tried to built, left behind like a worthless piece of dirt no one needed in their life in the first place. 

I need to learn that it’s no giving up on people if they don’t respect me in the first place. Or if they have no interest in understanding my world. 

My first deal of Kashmir I may have rather handled differently at a certain point where I should have realized he’s a blind and deaf psycho (not a dangerous one but one that’s been wrecking my nervous system), even the three weeks after I’ve left he managed more than a dozen times like a maniac talking to a wall sending the same messages asking me to call, being blocked and repeating it all over again to a point again that I feel like punching him in the face. For the other one it was a chance of lose or win in his bright and attentive moments vs. the ignorant, arrogant selfishness. 

Either way. Half a deal is also not a deal for me. I deserve the full package. 

I bought them as I saw them. They haven’t changed. The difference was I needed them for some parts and I saw potential. Maybe not theirs. But it was time to leave. More than. 

I feel happy today, grateful for the experiences, for the two clowns (I don’t mean that in any way offensively), to make me seem more clearly what I need and when I need it. I feel grateful that the universe send me a new person right when I went into the deep struggle with my ex-lovely. a Person who right away brought me all everything I was missing: caring for me, responsibility, independence, down to earth, open kind behavior, confidence, care for me in ever way making sure I’m comfortable, asking questions, looking at me and out for me. Communicating, trying to get to know me, to connect to me even before I was aware of it because I was so overtaken by my old emotions. I say something, he replies, not reacts, replies. Asking for my needs multiple times, serving them as we go. All this was not for nothing. It brought Rakesh from Mumbai into my life. 

NOTE: All swearing and insulting terms towards a culture, religion or people only comes from my personal anger in situation. I do not mean to offend any person or group in general. This merely reflects my emotional state of mind at times as a diary. 

VALUES: CARE, RESPONSIBILITY, ATTENTIVENESS, HONESTY, COMPASSION, EMPATHY