Leavin’ Las Vegas/that Paris or bust state of mind

Tags

buying a house, depression, dreams, expat, growing up, happiness, lebanon, life, Paris, twenties

Sometimes it takes breaking one’s 3 month travel fast two weeks earlier to go to a war-torn Middle Eastern country rife with sectarian divisions to realize that Paris is not the navel of the world, and it doesn’t have to be the center of my life, or its constant either.

I don’t plan to physically leave Paris in the immediate future except for travelling, but I might move out of the city for the suburbs (strong possibility of that actually), and I might someday leave the country for some new expatriation.

Yes, France is my home away from home, but I was right to leave all those years ago when I feared I would never find my way back and it was just my fear and coldhearted calculation that stopped me from following my dream to Paris. And yet, like my friend at the time who was Paris or bust and who also read the Alchemist and has since become pretty much my best friend in Paris told me, Paris, and France, weren’t always my clear cut dreams, and I should continue on my program, suck it up, and come back if I still wanted it. I came back, I complained and complained better than a French person, I adjusted, and I started thinking that yes, this is it, Paris and its environs for life. Not to mention my vacation days and all that jazz. I called a mortgage broker, thinking despite the fact I wasn’t exactly ideally financially placed to do it, it couldn’t hurt to move to the suburbs to an area I could eventually afford to buy, man or no, and buy that apartment on my own in the ultimate act of woman taking charge of her destiny #feministmanifesto .

In fact, as men are concerned, I have finally accepted with some grief that no man is ever going to make up for anything I”m missing inside of me. Being in a relationship, while it might meet some intimacy needs that are hard to scratch with just friends and lovers, won’t fundamentally improve my day to day quality of life outside of the initial passion and validation part. It won’t give me purpose. IT will just be another ting to make it harder to find my way towards myself. Just another constraint , though potentially also a source of support, like marrying Paris. I believed so strongly just a few weeks ago, that this was my great love, and I wanted to get married- to Paris, to France, to something.

And then, in an act which may have set my budget back a bit but also saved me countless amounts of time, money, and misery in the future, I took off for a new world, for the Middle East, and I fell in love with Lebanon. Where there are more Mexican restaurants, friendly people, and attractive men than in all of Paris.

The answer of course, isn’t just to abscond to Lebanon, tempting as it was to consider just buying another ticket and prolonging my stay despite my responsibilities at work and the fact I have to find a new place to live in 2 months and all the other adulting stuff that lies ahead of me. Just two more days in the sunshine.

I kind of like being a mess, to be honest. I am glad I am not the straight jacked straight laced self I have always inspired to become. I love my crazy, my fire, my genius that won’t let me what I feel like “they ” have always wanted from me.

My depresion can be explained somewhat thusly: I tried to lobotomize myself, and just be all that is good and innocent and sweet. I couldn’t admit , couldn’t allow my ambition, my desire for more, and that part of me that wants to step up and take control and make decisions based off my own good sense instead of what I should do. There is a long road from an english teacher to an MBA, and I felt icky about my participation in a wicked and corrupt system, and turned my hatred of the system on myself.

I tried to stop all hint of superficiality and materiality, and just concentrate on being deep and moral and good. But in doing so, I broke the boundaries self love would have wisely maintained. I wallowed in guilt and shame, unable to wake up from the cycle.

I haven’t done the minimal things to help myself out because I was afraid of making choices from a place of freedom, afraid to take responsibility for myself.

But yes, romantic ideals like “paris or bust” and that having a man or baby or four walls of a home will give some meaning to my life have fallen like the walls of troy.

Maybe it’s ok to be a bit more of a fighter, a bit more pushy, and it’s ok that I’ll never eb truly French.

Maybe it’s not about choosing a new culture but about making one’s own lifestyle.

I’ve spent too much of my life looking for a place to fit in, and not enough time accepting myself.  I do have a conscious community that does surround and support me everywhere I go.

Paris was not my dream- traveling and writing and leadership is.

 

 

Maybe I don’t have to own a piece of Paris. Maybe it’s enough to have lived here for a time, and maybe I will even continue living here.

It feels very sad to have lost faith in this dream, and to realize I have grown out of it in some way.

I prayed so hard that finally I would get everything I wanted, and I got most of it, and it still didnt’ feel enough.

I prayed that Paris owuld be my true home where I could stay forever, and now I recognize it is not.

As Paulo Coelho says, life is the train, not the station.

So today I am hanging around not getting dressed, watching TV, not doing anything of great help to myself for the moment, and just being.

I have a big week coming up, and a lot of things to think about.

or feel about rather.

My depression has lifted even more than before. Happiness came not from getting what I wanted, but from realizing my freedom.

I am a gypsy. I have feared this would make me unlovable, and I would never find someone as a result, and so I tried to plan myself in Paris, and I have blossomed.

Bu tI will bloom again.

 

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Love without clinging Part III- Bliss

Tags

bliss, buddhism, children, clinging, dating, deciding to be a mom, digital nomad, happiness, letting go, life, love, motherhood, philosophy, travel, twenties, vows, wanderer

I take to the internet, asking a group of digital nomads the eternal question-

Should I stay or should I go now?

Stay, and build, and get citizenship maybe. Go, on a new adventure, hoping that somewhere else is better, and maybe a bit better paying.

The answer was overwhelming “STAY”

A kind soul took the time to message me directly- “It’s not about France, it’s about you. What do you really want to do? Write that memoir. In the time it takes to get citizenship you can have sold the book and be planning book tours.”

And i can get to be a hotshot in content marketing and social media and enhance my professional reputation and pay off date and get that passport that will let me come back to France, always. Because I still love it and always will- even if at some point, I let go.

I talked to my good friend, who has also read the Alchemist a thousand times.

“Right now you’re the shiney shop guy who wants to go to Mecca, because you are comfortable and it might be good or bad”

So what is my Mecca- everywhere and nowhere, the road.

Space without center or limit.

Freedom.

Living out of a suitcase.

Being able to experience the world in all its diversity and beauty, and owning next to nothing.

At least for a time. To go, and support myself as I go, to have roots in the earth itself-

after having spent my youth in France incha allah.

 

As for the man and the  baby? If they come to me, when I am my full, lovely, enchantress, free spirit, arms wide open, travelling fool aspiring surfer girl and mountain mama self, why not?

If someone can take me with my philosophy, with my Buddhism, with my extraversion, with my sensuality and all my fire, YES.

But I am done trying to fit into a box- whether it be for a man or money or motherhood.

I am not an earth creature. I come from the fire, I fly in the sky. The earth is my friend, not my property. I flow like the ocean, in big waves, and sometimes in alpine lakes tucked high in the clouds.

I write and I speak and I tell my tales.

So I realized I’ve been to forty countries, and I hadn’t even realized it at the time.

“Your blog is about seeking and finding,” said my wise friend, my guardian angel.

I would rather have forty countries than forty blocks of gold. I want to be rich, yes, rich in experience and luxury and full of abundance and true prosperity.

YES money, but so much else.

So maybe I don’t want a cat and or a baby in such desperation as I thought before, even if I think babies are cute.

And as for a lover, I’m ready, but I’m not waiting for anyone.

I’m not a nun or a monk or anything like that, but I am vowed to the sky quand meme.

I am radiance, come what may, and that’s more important than trying to snare a man or rushing to be on time for a baby.

If they are mine, they will come.

And maybe I won’t be in the mood to roam forever.

Nothing is forever, all compounded things are impermanent.

And I am a Buddhist, whether I have taken refuge in the Buddha or not.

I have taken refuge in the sweet sad impermanence of the beauty, ugly, and ever changing world. I take refuge in the path, that never leads exactly where we think. I have taken refuge in joy and wonder and most of all, surprise.

I have taken refuge not in a country, but in liberte, egalite, fraternite

Joyeux fete de la Bastille

May we storm the prisons of our minds and gain victory every day.

 

Namaste

MJ

 

 

For my handsome stranger/ beau etranger

Tags

cross cultural romance, lost, love, twenties

I never imagined a future with you–

not even breakfast.

I thought I loved someone else, far away,

a daydream I thought was real.

 

 

I pushed you away as I drew you to me,

Telling myself it was just lust and your kindness.

I never imagined four years later it would be you, that

I’d shed

pure, clear tears

of sorrow.

 

I always thought love was knowing

And beautiful dreams, and a perfect match.

 

I never thought you would conquer me,

I never imagined our future.

 

I remember when we parted

The same pure tears

A crystal stream,

A clean wound

No disappointment, only sadness.

 

Maybe it was love because it was only for a moment

No expectations.

But I pushed you away as I clung to you in passion,

Afraid to love you too deeply,

to feel.

 

When finally we met again, I really loved you-

seeing you for the first time.

I would have followed you anywhere

I knew you were worthy.

 

I thought perhaps, your heart doesn’t really belong to her.

Your eyes are still the same when you look at me.

 

And maybe they will always have that same luster,

but you’re not mine.

 

The love I never looked for,

The one I couldn’t get back.

A clear, pure light.

 

 

I miss you, friend.

 

 

 

 

 

A place of deep contentment

Tags

expat, happiness, life, Paris, twenties

This long weekend, I had planned for an extended trip to Macedonia and Greece that quite simply just didn’t work out despite all my efforts.  What’s more, I had no plans on how I’d spend the Easter holiday.

Well, as it turned out I needn’t have worried. The magic of Paris intervened, and I had a wonderful adventure of a weekend filled with new friends and old, and most importantly, I found that I don’t have to move to be happy.

France is still something very special, after all this time. And in parallel, as I’ve spent more and more time with people who really appreciate me, I realize I am a work of art no less perfect and lovable in my imperfection.

The past few years have been a time of intense searching, and a fair amount of suffering. My life wasn’t so bad, and yet I wasn’t sure if something was wrong with me, if it was ok to be happy, if I was in the right place.

This weekend, the answer has come loud and clear- the still small voice still loves that I am here.

And even more importantly, loves me.

I found what I was looking for, thanks to a series of seemingly unfortunate events. Maybe now I don’t need the universe to go to such lengths to impress that lesson on me.

A weekend in Paris is still priceless and beyond compare.

And I know, deep in my soul, I am in the right place at the right time, and full of profound, enduring joy.

The other side of sorrow

Tags

beauty, buddhism, christianity, conversion, emptiness, plato, religion, sunyata, truth, twenties

For the past few days I have been feeling blue, but overall moving forward. I am not the person I thought I would be. I distanced myself from someone I considered a friend although I never fully trusted her. I have felt the pain of loneliness keenly, and the ever present shame of my realized fear of not being the person my parents wanted me to be, especially in regards to my turn towards Buddhism, which at least right now seems to be a liberating spirituality that releases my inner joy!

There is also the lingering sorrow it is hard not to beat myself up about- the fact that I wasn’t confident and mature enough to get back together with my ex when I came back to Paris and now I see him with new eyes and he’s unavailable. I know it’s not all on me, but I am still disappointed in myself, especially now that I realize he was the nicest guy I ever was involved with. If we had been together I think there are some parts of growth I wouldn’t have experienced, but right now I just want someone to hold me and I wonder how great I am be without a partner, without my basic emotional needs met.

I’ve also been moving forward in terms of the small habits that will help me take care of myself- I’ve been recording what I eat, keeping an eye on my accounts, and I did start cleaning my apartment. Though last week I only went to the gym once, I have been seeing and feeling a difference, and it scares me in a way. I am proud and happy, but it scares me.  I must believe that I deserve it, and look in the mirror and see the changed person and own that this is me.

I am a completely different person than when I was depressed.

I know this even more deeply since I have hesitated in my choice of holidays between a return to India, to see Ladakh near Western Tibet, without much of a fixed itinerary, and South AMerica, where I could see most of the highlights of Bolivia, Peru, and a bit of Chile in a whistlestop tour. I think I have found the balance though, and will leave some of the highlights for another time so I have a little more than a week completely at play, unscheduled. And since I just discovered a Tibetan restaurant within 15 minutes walk from my apartment and I already go to the Tibetan Buddhist center, perhaps there’s no need to go all that way, and I feel like I will get there eventually.

So in short, I am not the person I used to be.

Where I once sought, trying to find a home in one of the Abrahamic god’s many mansions where I spent my life feeling ashamed of my humanity, I have found a man of India who claims I am already a Buddha.

Where I once wanted to see all the treasures of the world as fast as possible for fear of missing out, I now seek depth in addition to breadth, and I know travel (and life) is about what can’t be captured in a photograph.

Where I once recoiled from life in learned helplessness, depressed and constantly at war with myself, I am slowly but surely becoming a friend and taking care of myself no longer feels as strange.

Where I once wanted to be normal and to fit in, especially with my family, I am haltingly coming to a place where I feel complete and good in myself. As friend told me, “You don’t need validation, you need a mirror.”

So things are going well, and I am fighting with myself less and less, becoming more and more honest, and letting many things go.

I am going to a new place I have never been before, to become a new person. I have already had to leave so many of me behind, and I know now that once a self is sloughed off like a snakeskin, it is gone forever. With its faults and its false comforts, its pleasures that will not be experienced as such again, its particular pains that have become so familiar they are almost a comfort, its familiar cage proscribing my range of motion.

 

The Panther- Rainer Maria Rilke

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

What is a panther when it leaves its cage? Space and joy- all conditioned things are impermanent.  Both the cage and the panther are an illusion. This next stage of Meganness is but a shadow play upon the wall.

And the light, rather than coming from the beauty of the forms, of the ideal of pantherness or of cage, comes from the truth of formlessness, of infinite potential, of the fact that all things were and are and will be and could be and are not.

I am not real, I am a dream, and I am the dreamer.

“I” is not real, “I” is a dream, the dream is one with the dreamer.

Where is the sorrow in that? That fairy stories are no more true than I make them, and I cannot force them to be.

 

Becoming a Buddhist

Tags

buddhism, christianity, happiness, life, philosophy, self-actualization, twenties, twenty something

So apparently without any great deal of ceremony one can be a Buddhist without knowing it, so long as one identifies with the 4 marks of Buddhism: https://www.lionsroar.com/what-makes-you-a-buddhist/

But for the past few months I’ve been going to a Buddhist centre, and I’m really happy to be there when I’m there and happy to be around the people I’ve met there.

I spent a weekend listening to teachings, and it was the first time in my life I felt that I had no reason to feel preteternaturally guilty for everything and part of a broken and fallen world, but rather something good because everything is basically good. I had a glimpse of this one day when I was in a Zen garden in Japan looking at lotus flowers, which inspired my first tattoo which I got a bit on impulse though I’d been thinking about it forever.

I still love the teachings of Jesus though, and I”m not 100% sure he didn’t rise from the dead, or that there’s not something to the whole Catholicism thing. Like Buddhism, it absorbed the rituals and traditions of the pagan religions that came before it, and there are som ereally great and specifically Catholic Christian things in this world. And the Dalai Lama, while nothing like th ePope and not speaking for all Buddhism let alone all Tibetan Buddhist schools, says one should be left alone in the faith tradition they were raised if not they risked great confusion. My Buddhist center definitely didn’t proselytize, and it was me who came to them and they accepted me without question, even when I acted a bit weird on purpose and scoured the internet to find reasons to think they were maybe not so great as they seemed.

I also decided I really want to go to Buddhist Northern India this summer, and I’m already reading travelogues about it. True, I could change my mind in a few weeks but I think whatever happens with my personal relationship to Buddhism it would be an amazing trip and I would learn a lot about myself.

Buddhism makes me so happy and fills me with a lot of calm but also a lot of questions. It’s just such an exciting thing to explore. I think I probably will go all the way with it, unless something in my heart speaks to stop me. Now I can feel it is mostly my mind, and fear of Hell, that causes me ot resist. Yet I am sure that Jesus is good.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Update: Waiting by the phone, waiting for my heart to be moved

Tags

choices, couple, dating, happiness, life, love, single, travel, twenties

So the guy was apparently working until 1 am with no access to his phone. I didn’t hear from him until the morning. He didn’t directly say sorry he just explained, and I said it was not a lot to ask for a word here and there. No response to that, and I can tell on whatsapp he really didn’t look at his messages until late afternoon. The joys of consulting (his job).

I’m really genuinely deeply sad because I realized that I did trust him that he was not to blame for whatever happened and he wasn’t doing it on purpose, although I am not happy that I didn’t yet get an explicit apology and that he didn’t respond to me after I specifically told him that it bothers me and he agreed.

I think the truth is that it’s not about me. But it remains to be seen if I can fit in the picture.

It occurred to me as I waited for him to eat dinner just how much I wanted someone to eat dinner with. It occurred ot me how much I was hoping that this relationship might take off and give me someone to kiss at New Years and buy a Christmas present for. I imagined cuddling and soothing him after a long day’s work and admonishing him to take better care of himself.

That being said, there hasn’t been a moment that I’ve felt my heart leap out of my chest. I am approaching this relationship o so soberly as much as I might affect or try to affect a devil may care attitude, because the truth is that it’s not everyday you meet someone smart and adventurous and bold and directwho seems to be genuinely kind and responsible towards others. But for various reasons despite quite a lot of speaking online in the first few weeks I’ve only met him in person once, and yesterday was planned to be the second time.

Maybe it’s for the best. I’m actually relatively glad of the virus that took over his phone that prevented the first meeting, it gave me a chance to heal from depression in ways I didn’t even realize I needed to heal.

And now I feel so grounded, like I have an unshakeable, deeply rooted care that isn’t planning the self worth how is this my fault that I am not loved game, at least not as i would have before, but I am really genuinely sad because I want a relaionship very much.

I want to make joint vacation plans and discover new things with someone who sees the world a different way. I know I can have a blast by myself but I want a new adventure, a new person to challenge me, and someone to share the highs and lows with.

I have always wanted this, and coming out of depression has made it all the more clear.

Because while travel has become very important to me and understanding other cultures and stretching my mind always was, I have travelled far enough to meet myself. And the Megan show, while amazing, needs not just an audience but a co-conspirator. And a bit of romance, seriously.

I get that no one is going to be perhaps, but it will be hard to move from judging on how inadequate my friends boyfriends are to consciously accepting the flaws of my own. I don’t know how much is too much. I do know that feeling ignored is very painful for me, and it’s important for our flaws to fit each other.

It doesn’t have to be this guy, but man, I am fucking tired of looking. And there’s never going to be anyone perfect.

Despite how open I may seem, there is now a guardrail around my heart. I’ve blamed my heartbreaks on myself, for trusting too fast, for not being circumspect enough. Now I wonder if mature love is a boring ass feeling that mostly consists of coming to terms with the fact that life is disappointing so you might as well accept flaws you can tolerate.

I do think there’s some magic to it, somewhere. ANd the magic is probably rather latent, in hiding, and has to do with remaining an interesing person.

All I know is in my heart of hearts, and I don’t think i’s p;urely biological, I genuinely don’t want to be single anymore and I really want to be part of a healthy couple.

And soon. I resigned myself for waiting as long as it taok, but to a certain extent that’s procrastination and the refusal to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of our own blessings.

Damn I am disappointed.

I didn’t know that the process of getting into a relationship had to be so difficult and trying. I feel so freakin exposed. I let someone know I give a shit. I lost my cool.

I am not in control.

My first and only serious relationship, I was definitely in control. He was devoted to me like a puppy ad i ended up nagging and mothering him. people asked me why i had to be the better half in my relationships at some point.

but after that i was always unrequited “love” with someone who didn’t respect me. just last year i went round a round with a guy who kept cancelling dates at the last minute or just not telling me when he couldn’t come. i kept giving him chances though but eventually he unfriended me.

i just want ot dance with somebody who loves me and feel something again.

maybe that means things ahve to go slower.

i was really happy about this guy because i asked him in my direct but joking way if we were seeing other people and he said no he’s not when i told him i wasn’t. with his work schedule i don’t doubt it.

but i can’t be with someone who doesn’t have the time and energy for me.

i hope that’s not the case.

i’m sad.

also today i became obsessed with doing a silk road vacation and had the feeling that perhaps i’ve been outdoing myself in the travel department as i feel making the kind of home i want in paris is just so completely and utterly out of my control. up until my last trip, i feared misisng out on things because of a significant other. now, i know that i want a signficant other more than i want to get to all my dream destinations.

maybe someday i will feel like that about a baby, and i don’t think this desire for a man is a purely biological one. i’m sure it’s just coming out of depression and admitting how human i am.

and perhaps i need to be compassionate and realize not all men are trying to manipulate and gain the upper hand. i think i need to go back to the psychologist to get some toxic stuff cleare dout.

please cross your fingers for me. i want to make love out of nothing at all, for real this time.

i even recognize the calmer steadier feeling instead of the heady rush of something that can never be. we’re not in love yet but i think if the right circumstances and conditions and respect can be created we could be.

namaste and wish me luck.

MJ

Tags

buddhism, christianity, depression, expat, faith, ghosting, happiness, life, love, original sin, Paris, twenties

the guy i wrote about in my last post dropped off the face of the earth for a week, so i decided to call him. when i called him, i was pretty sure it was already a lost cause but i try to give people the benefit of the doubt. and maybe someone who was really good for me wouldn’t mind me making the call.

what happened is he called me back on whatsapp and then blocked me. i sent him some text messages asking what happened but telling him i’m not going to chase him.

no response.

it’s so bizarre. earlier this week i was supposed to meet someone who has the same first name, and who didn’t show. this is the same name as the guy that i fell in love with the idea of, spilled much digital ink over, and who cut things off with me rather abruptly. i haven’t spoken to him in about two years, and i think this is what made me lose all hope and faith in fairytale endings.

not a bad thing, i guess. i guess these things have to happen not because you will them to and persist in wishful thinking, but because they do. you can’t beleive in the goodness of someone and will it into existence.

i guess this latest and greatest case just shows once again that maybe there really isn’t anything wrong with me for the fact i have not yet attracted being in a relationship. at a subconscious level, i thought it came down to the Rules, and how i wasn’t following what my mother would do. but what i really think it comes down to is self respect and to finally really believe that it is really not me, it’s them.

I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

With the original C, I enabled and pushed and prodded his behavior and strung it out literally for years, holding on to the hope of a Disney ending. I was in love iwth the idea of him more han the actual him, and he knew it and fled.

I have to believe that these guys know themselves better than I do, and they are doing me a favor by getting out of my life. I do earnestly believe that.

I think what’s holding me back the most from love is my inability to receive it from myself, and a persistent feeling that I don’t have it all, that’s something’s missng unless I get the final brass/diamond ring. That if someone doesn’t want to own me, I must be defective, and if I attract/am attracted to shitty guys then the problem really is me.

I do believe that I am the common denominator of all my problems. I also acknowledge I’ve eben depressed for at least 3 of the last years, and that’s not the ideal time to meet someone since no one, absolutely nothing and no one, could lift you up out of your own mire. Someone can throw you a rope, but you have to clutch it. I have to believe life threw me many ropes over the course of that time, and while I didn’t get out of it, at least i controlled my descent somewhat.

Love is not a cure for depression. In fact, I’d say it was probably an accelerator of it.

I’m not really sure how or where I got the idea that I was unlovable, but it was probably from the fact that I couldn’t rearrange the universe to make someone who both loved me and had to let me go, because he could see we were heading in different directions, and was also a dick enough to keep stringing me along to some extent. it was probably before that, when i left my first love and saw him colllapse, or in his long slow decline before I finally left him. He was depressed too.

things got more poisonous with the rebound guy, nearly three years of toxicity and believing I deserved it because I didn’t play by the rules, and hen I finally realized that my friends fed into the system too and it was no wonder I bounced between both, one form of toxic more obvious than the other.

and then there was C, the knight in shining armor who wasn’t. The man who could have been my husband, I told myself. The one who got away because I didn’t stay at home, I dind’t follow plan A, I didn’t save the world, I didn’t go to Washington, I wen tto France. The guy who pushed me there and supported me sometimes, the one who helped me be sure I was on the right path when I doubted it the most. The guy who left me completely rather than see me run after him. The guy who couldn’t cross town for me when I crossed a country and would ahve crossed an ocean for him, and all the Captain America righteousness he represented. Like the comic Captain America, he was working for the other side all along.

Or something like that. Because even comics aren’t morally black and white these days.

And then the past two years of empy, broken, healing heart. Just nothing, no feeling, just a tad bit of crush from time to time, and disappointment. My heart has stayed pretty broken, but not in a way that would let someone new in. And no one seems to love em either. I rallied at the sight of this new guy’s name, another one sharing a name with the patron saint of travellers, another one who seemed to share so much with me. I didn’ have particuarly high hopes.

The truth that I’ve known all along is that I don’t need a man, I need a super hero. But I need to be a super hero first. I cannot attract the love of my life when I’m in the depths of depression and spiralling out of control, much as I want to beleive I am lovable then.

But I’m not going to attract the best partner if I’m not working towards being the best partner.

The flawed belief that’s been hiding inside me is that I think I deserve what I’ve gotten from these guys, because I should be in control, should know better, should always have the right thing to say, should be a better manipulator, should be better, thinner, richer, more put together.

And also that I don’t deserve it because who am I to be both a strong, independent woman who follows her dreams, and a loved, feminine, romantic girlfriend who is treated like a princess? Why can’t I be a princess and a person at the same time?

Maybe I can or cannot combine, work, travel, and family- I actually think I can- but I know I deserve love. I deserve the happy ending. Not because I put in the work of dealing with a bitch ass guy and manipulated him into it, not because I waited a million years until my dream of having a family was no longer possible, not because I decided to pick someone whose flaws don’t fit mine just to have someone.

Being in a couple is important to me, as much as it scares me. I am mostly scared about making sacrifices for someone and not having it work out. I am scared about not following my path and all the things I would have missed had I stayed with my first boyfriend.

But I guess I have to trust life a little bit. Life intervened. And admit that love and partnership are not my highest values. They are really not.

It’s not so much that even travel is, or career. It’s beign the best person I can be and living my life ot the fullest. And I do believe there’s many possible partners out there who could help me do that.

Maybe the most important step though, is to have the courage to decide what it is I want, at the moment at least. Which is becoming a French citizen, for me. This is the battle I’m in, that I want to win, so help me God. This is my major life goal for the next approximiately three years, while travelling and working.

After that, I don’t think I want to necessarily travel for 6 months at a time, or radically change careers. I want to make my life in Paris as rich as it can possibly be. I don’t need to become a long term traveller, and I don’t think that lifestyle would fulfill me. I need to write, take photos, live healthfully in mind, body and spirit. I don’t think a radical lifestyle change is the answer is this time. I just need to win the battle I”m in.

And as for the kids question, I have to surrender it to a higher power. If it’s meant to be, it will come.

This is the faith that has been lacking in my life during these years of depression, the feeling I had made some kind of choice that was fundamentally wrong and because of this my world had fallen, the world was fallen, and I would never get back to a state of grace.

instead I’ve found the basic goodness of things, and that I’ve been good, and even great, all along.

Instead of wondering how I’ll achieve greatness or map my ideal life plan, I need to plan my days. Instead of trying to change careers or countries, I need to flourish where I have planed myself, with good reason. The lack of self trust has been the biggest torture.

When I find a relationship, it won’t be the be-all end-all sign that I’m on the right track. It will be another pillar of a flourishing life, another flower in a garden that is green because I watered it.

I know, when I am in Paris, I am in the right place. That I shouldn’t move to the suburbs, or change countries, or think it will be any better anywhere else. It won’ be. This is my place, and it wasn’t an illusion or selfishness that I made it my mission to come here. However strange and vain and unglorious it sounds, this is my fight. To stay, to thrive, to make the place itself flourish. To be happy here, to let myself finally be happy.

And it has nothing to do with getting away from my family, or the US. I just fell here, a seed carried by the wind, because this is where I am meant to flower. This is, it is good.

And just like I had faith that I would come here and things will work out all right, I have faith I am going to find hat special person. That life will put him on my path the way I landed in Paris, and I will have the grace to receive that love when it comes to me, and to give it uback.

I don’t want to be depresed anymore. i am not depressed anymore. My depression was based on the idea that I had made mistakes in my life and I was not where I was supposed to be, and everything in my life was suboptimal and I couldn’t be trusted.

But yes, I can, I can be trusted, I am wise, and my happiness, my joy, is the singing of the stars.

Namaste

MJ

 

 

 

 

When you realize depression was a gift

Tags

being, buddhism, christianity, depression, future, growing up, heaven, hell, hope, life, love, spirituality, twenties

All the money overspent, all the extra pounds gained, all the ambitions self-thwarted, all the pleasures indulged to try to keep the darkness away for one second, all the despair, the loneliness, the unworthiness, the direct contact with the coldest circle of hell and seeing where it exists in your own mind, realizing hell is not other people nor a place anywhere outside of yourself, that you bring it with you, even to Paris, and that no amount of striving or accomplishment can keep the hellhounds at bay, only the deepest and most prfound self acceptance, and acknowledgment of the past, and gradual deblurring of your truly deepest desires, with all shoulds finally shed, all the monsters out from under the bed, no more skeletons in the closet, a great Flood that has finally, with all the tears shed and unshed, washed the Doubt  away.

And what is left when fear has passed- nothing, no superstition, no God on his throne in Heaven above, no magic ritual,no sacrifice, no altar,  no waiting for it to finally all click. No dogma, no priest, no illusion, not even hope, no “visions” of the future.

All there ever was and will be, eternity, a clear sky with no north or south, east or west, just a path that is a destination, just God everywhere, neither above nor below, a koan without an answer, a love that knows no bounds or conditions, salvation from both Heaven and Hell. A ring of endless light, beautiful and terrible.

You seek God forever, gladly, blissfully, gratefully, even though you know he’s right here.

 

Transformation and Destruction- It couldn’t have been any other way

Tags

depression, happiness, learning, life, mistakes, psychology, self love, selfworth, treatment, twenties

Over the course of the past five years, my life has changed completely from anything I ever consciously imagined. It’s not at every second a happy life, but it’s satisfying because it’s honest. The so-called mistakes are genuine ones I couldn’t have done any better with and brought me to a better place; I am no longer ashamed of the process of learning.

I felt shame and guilt constantly as I colored outside the lines and painted with the wrong color, and then I realized I was creating something new and original rather than following the patterns I’d been ingrained with.  The truth is that even if you live your life trying to follow the instructions, there’s no guarantee of success or happiness, especially if you are ignoring your soul’s call to do it. Life has a way of spilling milk all over your coloring book, so it’s better to grow up and buy an easel and a blank canvas. Then you can call your mistakes art, and you won’t be wrong.

I believed for most of my life that my worth came only from external things, and from my efforts to attain perfection. It got a bit confusing at times to define perfection, and I thought choosing the poison was the only form of originality I deserved. To compensate for this, I fucked up many of the things I thought were most important, and punished myself for the few creative choices I had made when they didn’t turn out as expected, and beat myself for “selling out,” when I did do something that seemed sensible, but the bottomline was that I dissected myself and all my choices down to nothing. I destroyed myself from overanalysis, and fell into depression.

But depression can be a gift. When nothing seems to matter any more, you tend to find out what does matter. When you feel really alone, you spend time with yourself. And though depression can be fatal and can last for far too long, it can and should be a passageway to a more authentic self.

These days, I am not chasing perfection, but performance. Trying to do my best, rather than be the best. Because even in the depths of despair and utmost fuck up, I still have value and worth. And I could only really learn that by losing a lo of things. The cost of his knowledge was very, very hihg, but like all things learned through experience, its true worth is incalculable. To live the rest of my life from this place of really knowing my worth deep down in my bones, it’s freedom. The random price was high, but completely worth it.

And now I want to change my life. Because I feel excited again, and I want to live every day from a place of loving myself. Which means things are going to have to change a lot from my depression. The positive side is that my old self is gone, and is replaced with something real and solid that was always there, only masked, hidden, under years of detritus and social conditioning.

The truth is, that I don’t know if there was another less painful and destructive way.

But I’m happy I made it here, and I decide how the story ends- or rather, continues.

It’s up to me to reflect love for myself in all my daily choices, in the way I speak to myself, in the people I choose to hang out with, in the ideas I let influence me.

With the help of a psychologist, I’ve identified and treated the underlying emotional problems that finally erupted in depression. I felt the whole time like I was struggling and crying for help but no one could see me, but with therapy, someone has, and I am doing much better. There were many hurts that needed to be acknowledged before I could let go of them. They all had a message- I have a right to be here, I feel, I deserve to be me.

What’s next? Life, on my own terms, lived to the fullest.

🙂

Namaste

MJ