New Waves : Old Waves

Waves. Up and down they have been going for the last weeks, finding their peak last night. Shaking up my world again and again without a break. Between sheer excitement, happiness and gratitude to anger, pain, hurt, frustration, plain exhaustion. Screaming, yelling, crying. Insults. Offense, torn apart in tears, taken back to my teenage years when nothing made sense, when I didn’t know a way in or or out, torn between love and anger. Living through the same moments over and over again like a never ending movie. Only with one difference. It happened in awareness. It happened without losing control over the situation, without getting lost in a world that was in the end too much to handle for me. It still hurt.

Coming out of this, to a far away place,  starting to process it all, to integrate it into my later version of myself, my new host asks me to tell him something about myself. I can see he likes me. The feeling is familiar. So unnatural. Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to process? He showed me the map to get around in Ladakh, to be independent. “I need time alone, for myself” I say. “I have to process.” He asked 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 when from the first moments he talked about love while he at no point even knew or cared about 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 someone to heal his broken heart. But how can you love when you didn’t heal your own pain in your own heart? How can you give anything in this world 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, 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 will never work. No one can heal you 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 at all times 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 things to me every day? It’s not fair. I’m only one person and every person who speaks to me is only 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. 

Because the Universe is still listening it’s sending me the same person outside, putting me to test about what I’ve learned within the last weeks. 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 they are in their own mind and in ninety percent of the time cannot take a hint. I look at him: “I’m only a customer. I don’t see your problem. I said I want to be alone.” That was the third time. He understands. “You’re right. Im sorry.” It still cost me energy. Not even little. It’s like a small torture inside telling people to go 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 requests. This I learned for 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 only listening to what I say and then ignore me. This is already boundary number one crossed. 

I’m proud to manage this time from the beginning to speak up for myself and walk away from the situation right away. 

Having said that, have I done another big step on my journey by ignoring all the last calls and messages from my Kashmiri challenge for the first time which causes similar feelings of doing wrong to someone like rejecting or resisting a person. At the same time it brings me peace at heart, gives me back my freedom. 

Having my best friend, my mom and another loved one who I haven’t spoken to in many months, call me last night, touched me so deeply, giving me exactly what I’ve needed: listening, asking for my well being, only just to be there, to show me their care. “Lina, please take care, please be observant and pay attention. No matter how open you are, at no point do you need to let anyone touch you or even get close to you, when you don’t feel like it. Set your boundaries, be there for yourself. I really miss you. When you come back, we’re having a big barbecue in our garden, no matter what season. You will sleep over and get many bottles of sparkling. I will even arrange for a heater if it’s winter, give you all the blankets. For anything.”  I cannot remember the last time I heard such words. Hearing these words that someone misses me, for me, for wanting to have me around as a person because they truly love me, is something I’ve been missing for a while. 

It feels I even get used to not being seen after a while drifting into my own world. The Universe in its nature though never leaves me. It takes over decisions I don’t want to make through others, it gives me exactly what I’m asking for in the moments I’m asking for it and guides me through my new unknown environment. As it is my shepherd in the high Himalayas. 

The small moments when I directly ask a question and it’s being answered in the same moment. I take out my phone asking the universe if I shall still walk to the city. Before four yes, after no. Four to four. I keep walking. Ten meters later I find 300 Rupis on the dusty floor. I smile. 

I find myself sitting on my packed bags. The taxi is 300 Rupis. I sigh. Then I remember yesterday. That’s what they were for. This is why the universe made me walk to the city again. I’m tired. My skin got thin again. I cry the tears that have needed to come out probably even before. I leave and move on. “I will hold you in my arms and you will get rid of your fragile thin skin” he says. I hope it will. 

Just as I’ve told my friend this morning sending out a prayer to the universe that I really need a like minded friend now, a woman, similar mindset to support each other and share our experiences especially when the heart is getting heavy. 

Arriving at my new place I take a peak, a whole group of smiling faces, laughing welcoming me. I manifested smiling faces. They give me all kinds of information, show me my room and there… I stumble over her. Delphine. I’ve seen her before. Crystal clear blue eyes, short hair, her blue backpack ready to go. We smile. I feel our vibe entangling. Directly, instantly no hesitation. We start talking, she speaks my mind. “Before I leave can we exchange numbers, you’re the first solo traveler I meet, I’m so happy, I was struggling so much. I was writing in my diary this morning how hard it is.” I wanna kiss and hug her, I feel her, she sees me. We’re smiling, excited like we’ve just met our soul angel. We go for lunch, speak about our experiences, our life, our hearts, they seem to be alike. I walk her to the bus station. I wanna follow the next days. Now I have someone to test it out for me. My heart hasn’t smiled so bright in quite some time. 

“If you have an issue get a tissue” says the tissue holder in front of me. Sitting on a wooden Tibetian balcony in a cafe, view on the rocks of the Himalaya and the snow covered peaks; having my cappuccino while my life saver friend, my love sends me a message deeply touched, in empathy and admiration, asking me how I do it that all my wishes come true right away, wanting to know how manifestation works. I can feel his smile through the phone. I feel so light as I haven’t felt in a long time. The sun shining bright. The Universe means well. All my struggles, my hard work, my will to understand, empathize and adapt finally repaying me by sending a likeminded soul my way, to maybe walk a part of this path with me. 

And not only her but my lovely, my heart that I’ve missed for too long. My true friend from day one. Calling me today, he informs me that he will come to see „his love“ tomorrow. In the mean time I block my trial husband for a month on social media as I’ve warned him uncountable times and it took him no more than a few hours to disrespect my all wishes for more than five days now. It breaks my heart. It still hurts me deeply that my words have no weight in his world. Realizing that even afterwards, even from far nothing changes. Not even a friendship is possible that way. All my efforts feeling like they’ve stranded somewhere far away from his world. My head knows, there’s nothing to change about it. Even I put myself too far out there but my heart is hurt. Hurt from all the goodwill, the hard work, the hope of being recognized and in the end having to give in. 

The intensity of the Ladakh sun shining straight up on me on top of the stupa, burning away struggles. I breathe heavily. The holy place. I sit down in the meditation hall. There’s no place for Indians not to take pictures, talk on the phone or be noisy for no reason. I still find no respect in that. Also moving through the city still doesn’t feel naturally to me with everyone ruthless, moving around. Trying to get an ice cream shake, I’m being ignored as so many times before, run over by two Indians, I give up and just walk away. Not today. I don’t want to fight. Not for nothing. Not for love and not for an ice cream. I want to be respected, I want to be recognized, I want to be seen without having to change my personality, become disrespectful or angry. This culture makes me work hard every day. Let’s see how far I can get in this journey with my soft heart and sensitive skin. Maybe with two caring people by my side I can defeat the outside and heal my inside.