This morning I woke up and lied in bed thinking about Udaipur and all the events that took place. There was a lot. I going to be thinking about this a lot for the rest of my life of course but what I was pondering specifically is how I'm going to put some of this on paper. I decided to tell the stories in layers. Some of this first layer made me very raw emotionally but let's see how this goes.
Almost 4 years ago I was out of work and decided to go on vacation to Greece. During this trip I met an Australian man and we had the time of our lives. We laughed until our guts hurt and found ourselves in these romantic settings that I didn't think ever really happened outside chick flicks. I never felt so good in my skin. At the end of the trip we parted ways, I didn't think anything would ever come of it but I was wrong. We had what I can only describe as an uncommitted romantic connection that lasted for two and a half years. This included seeing each other a handful of times. In the end he found a girlfriend back home and I just wanted to move on. In September, before I left for India, I wrote him an email telling him that I felt like I moved on and we should be friends. He didn't respond and I thought nothing of it.
While Inga, Jacek and I were still at Amma's ashram I told Inga about him and decided to try attempting to contact him again via email. The first morning I was in Udaipur I checked my email to find that this time he had answered me. He told me very proudly that he recently became the father of a beautiful baby girl. This didn't really surprise me, he had told me before that he wanted children but my heart just broke. I realized at that moment that I still had hope hidden somewhere inside that things would work out and that it was about to die for good. I properly congratulated him and for the rest of the day I kept myself very busy. I shopped and got fitted for clothes at the tailor, I wasn't ready to think about this just yet. That evening after I retired to my room for the evening I broke down and it was intense. Over the next couple of days my time was interwoven with walking around town seeing the sites, eating meals with my buddies and crying in my room. The thoughts running through my head were that I was so very happy for him, this is what he wanted but than I was very sad for myself, I had lost something special for good and it hurt.
I didn't suppress in any way how I felt. To make matters worse in that first week all three of us got the flu and I got inflammation in my shoulder, the most painful spot for me to get inflamed. Those 6 days before I had my life altering conversation with Bubbel was pretty crappy but I always got the sense that it was the end and the start of something, just didn't know what. When I had that conversation with Bubbel, with all the other bits and pieces of my life in India, I told him what I had been going through. His advice was to hug the pain, own it, let it take over so it can pass on unobstructed, advice that I now would share with others. He also told me that I would heal quickly because in all my pain I had zero anger toward him or any part of the situation. I understood his words so clearly and from that moment on I felt free. I was still sad, the pain wasn't completely gone but I somehow understood it in a way that it no longer pulled me under, in the realm of depression.
I changed all my plans to stay longer and it didn't take long before a wave of happiness swept over me. I was happy for my Australian friend and I was just as happy being on the adventure of a lifetime rather then changing dirty diapers! I had Inga, Jacek, Bubbel and a couple of other cool girls at the Island Tower guesthouse that got pulled as I did to stick around much longer than planned.
A few days later, on the very day I was suppose to leave for Canada, something else happened. A very good looking guy wanders into the guesthouse. At this point I had been teaching yoga on the rooftop in the morning so Bubbel was introducing me to everyone arriving. Other than noticing I don't really react to good looks so much anymore, I think I've come to an age that I find substance much more attractive. I talked to him for a bit and found out pretty quickly that he was quite interesting, outgoing, easygoing, well traveled and had his own auto-immune condition having plagued him in parts of his life... but happy and doing excellent. For a couple of evenings he entertained us on the rooftop with his amazing camp-fire style guitar playing/singing. He took requests :)
It took about 2 days before I noticed him in a different way, he turned out to be very funny and I liked him a lot. While he was there the 2 girls that had been there since before we arrived left. I was sad. Others came as well including the funniest Frenchmen I ever met in my life, a German girl that would stay with us for Holi and Joonas, the Finnish guy that steered us to Diu, our current location. Every evening there was a slightly different crowd gathering on our little rooftop paradise but there always seem to be a continuing string of like-mindedness happening during those days.
On day 3 of his residency my new camp-fire guitar crush was now leaving. I had kept a distance from this one, I never flirted with him or made any kind of advance. For one thing I never even tried to find out if he was available and secondly I understood that we both had our own paths during our journeys, I wasn't going to let myself get in the way.
It felt good to leave things be but after he left I felt heart-broken again. It seemed odd to me to feel so much for someone I really didn't know but I was going to let it be what it was going to be as I did before, this didn't happen randomly and I needed to embrace it. I think the reason it had such an affect on me is that it woke up a lot of intense fiery feelings again and new hopes. Things I love to feel. I really took the time to explore this and talk with my friends about every thought that went through my head. I caught myself red-handed probably a dozen times beating myself up over this but I didn't tolerate it. Every time my mind was going to bad places I recognized it and I took out my diary to praised myself on how wonderful and positive it was that I could open my heart so freely and easily. Every morning I sat on the rooftop in the sun feeling the brightness around me, letting it penetrate and illuminate every dark spot in my heart and mind, listening to music on my ipod that would inspire an even bigger heart and if I fell into a little day dreaming about a knight that would never be... so what?
I saw an opportunity in this situation, I explored every nook and cranny of this. Eventually I had to find a perspective that would take this experience and move it into the past. It's funny, both Inga and Joonas gave me the key to moving on from an infatuation but I didn't hear it. Then came Bubbel with his Indian accent and sweet sensitive wise nature giving me the exact same advice and it sinked in. "Be happy you met him and with all your might wish him happiness for the rest of his life, take yourself out of the thought, don't desire, don't expect". I heard it this time and thought wow, wanting happiness for someone is actually really easy and in fact this is how I got over my Australian friend. I started immediately, to my room I went and visualized as hard as I could a wonderful happy and healthy life for him. Within a few hours my crush started fading and I felt SO happy. It was like I gave myself a dose of happy pills, I felt euphoric. I kept with it for a few days and over time getting what I wanted stopped mattering completely. I still thought about him but now it was a beautiful memory. I was stunned... I'm still stunned.
I got the inspiration to do a little ritual. I wrote down the names of every guy I could think of from the time I first started noticing boys wither it was a crush, an infatuation or full blown love. Below I wrote an apology for any bad feelings I may have had from not getting what I wanted and followed it with a blessing for the best life possible for each of them. I burned it and scattered the ashes to the wind from he rooftop.
That day I was very surprised to feel raw and empty. I felt like my dog died. What I did was powerful on me and I believe based on that feeling that I must have been still carrying some of these people around with me and I didn't even know it.
The feeling passed and on the day it was completely gone I left the Island Tower.
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