So a few years ago, I started losing my mind. I was getting into these states where I felt as if there is a fog cloud in front of my eyes but sort of coming from the frontal lobe of my brain. It was making every thought misty and soon I would totally loose the touch with self, I was merely a pre-programmed robot. It was hard to distinguish if I am really there or if it’s just a dream. A very dull antagonizing and confusing dream-like experience. It is a strange state to describe really, I knew exactly what I was meant to be doing in a day in terms of “get up, get dressed, now eat” and how to “make” my body do it but I lost the tangibility of my sense of personality doing those things. These “cloudy” moments would come and go until finally, few years later, they came to stay. I had no clue what was going on so being a psychologist, I went to get help. My therapist told me maybe I should go and have my head examined, no other ideas of it being psychosomatic. I didn’t (looking back maybe I should have but I was lucky the problem was not a tumor or something horrific like that).
So on I went into my life with this damn cloud in front of my eyes. The feeling is kind of you are in a stuffy room staring at the window and having this disparate craving to open it and breathe in the fresh air, but you simply don’t know how to open it. The agony was devastating at first and then, as any good old hurtful but persistent thing, I got used to it. Occasionally I would totally forget it was there for many months at a time. I didn’t speak about it to people, fearing they will label me as “crazy”. But very occasionally if I valued someone spiritually or psychologically or in any way as “brain-literate” I would burst out and tell them this story about the cloud that lives in my brain. And yes, they too nodded their head in sympathy and confusion, but probably just thought I was crazy. I can’t even blame them, I would probably think the same if the situation was reversed. I mean, after all, I was still seemingly fully functional. Until one day I took a substance with a group of friends, and the mist casually picked itself up and left my brain as if nothing had ever happened. My brain took a deep fucking breath and I was in total awe! The substance is illegal, of course, but it gave me crucial information: it is a condition that can be manipulated! “Ok” – I thought, “I can work with that”.
I suppose different things help different people. After years of experimenting with different diet plans, supplements, exercises, I found that, for me, the most effective hack is a supplement called DMAE, I get it off the internet, legally, it costs £4 and lasts me months.. Clears up my brain fog like a janitor. I can’t believe it took that much time for such a big yet so easily manageable problem to be solved. I am so glad I was persistent in experimenting on myself and grateful for the sharpness of thought I have from the results. There are many other strategies now out there too. The point is, if you feel you could be feeling better, you probably can, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Life is not meant to be suffering. The saddest thing I realized on the way is the number of people who are experiencing the same, but don’t think much of it.
Many many years later, now finally, in the heavily underrated information age, to the thrill of us all, when you type in “brain mist” into your search box, you get hundreds of helpful links and explanations of what is it in fact you are experiencing. It has a name, it’s “brain fog”, and you can finally comfort yourself that you are not bloody crazy. It’s a state of mind that can be easily attended to.
Roll up your sleeves and get that best version of yourself you deserve!!
Me and my boyfriend broke up after spending 5 years together, and knowing each other for 7. I am not well. It has been 6 days now, and I have just gotten to write about it now because I was booked to work from as soon as I landed back from visiting him to late last night. Working this week was a horror story. For the first time in my life (and for the first time as a symptom of a breakup) I am experiencing some disturbing physical symptoms. I have shortness of breath and chest pain. I keep taking long deep breaths but to no avail. My usual go-to coping mechanism is distraction, but it seems not to help this time. My mind gets distracted, my thoughts are with the present task, but the chest pain is still severe and at some points I get a strong burning sensation in my breast area.. I was so so tired all day every day these last few days, I just wanted to go home and disappear. And even though I had no trouble sleeping at night, getting up in the morning seemed just so repelling. Mornings are the worst, at first when I touch base with being conscious it’s birds chirping and sun shining, and in the next millisecond it hits me – the truth that I am in this s* situation. My chest starts burning and I wish I can just fall back to unconsciousness.
Update: 2 weeks later..
I am a freelancer (thank heavens) so I didn’t book in any work for the following week and I decided to go back home and get some dog therapy from my pooches, the only thing I could think of that would make any healing plausible. It didn’t help much, unfortunately. Writing about the situation did though. So that’s what I am doing here.
**I decided to (after nearly a year now) publish this, just to be a support to any other broken people out there who are, as I was here, desperately roaming the internet in search of anything that can help them get over a tough breakup.**
Therefore, a disclaimer: This is my therapy session, NOT A BLOG POST per se! It’s purpose is not necessarily to share useful tips and information (although I plan to post another blog where I go through some of the tricks that helped me get over this breakup) or entertain or ..or ..or.. Its sole purpose was in it’s making – the process itself is healing for me. Writing and writing and writing about it is the only (or rather, the best) thing that makes me feel less than totally miserable right now. So pardon my informal language and scattered remarks and my lack of desire to impress by ideas or content, all flaws and stuff on this one.
Here it goes..
It was not even a good relationship. That’s what’s bizarre about this whole thing. When we first met, I liked him because he had a nice sense of humor and some mature guy charm that was just so irresistible to the 25 year old me. But he was not a good man, and not a good fit, quite the opposite – an anti-fit. He lacked everything magical that makes a man have value for a girl like me – full of fairy dust and delusional optimism. In that sense, he was not even a person yet, he seemed as if he was born as an adult. But I suppose for that particular moment he reflected what I was going through in life. Namely, right about the same time we started seeing each other, my father got ill and soon after passed away, and my whole world of fantasy and cheerfulness went with it. It was a time of nothingness, and he fit right into that.. I see that now, but at the time I didn’t notice there was a theme there.
He was quite intellectually eloquent, I liked that. And the most informed person I have ever met in my entire life, I liked that even more. We could talk for hours. He was very good at explaining things as well and I am super curious and find knowledgeable people super hot. But then when it came to human contact and emotional interaction, things were blunt and horrible. The first time we slept together was by far the worst sex I ever had in my life. And it seemed to me that he is not withholding on purpose, it seemed that he genuinely doesn’t know how to do it, or even worse – that being gentle in bed is a thing. It was zero me and totally him. I remember once (much later on) he was telling me that a good “fu**er” is the one that screws a lot a women for his own satisfaction, not the one that “sucks up to women by aiming to satisfy her”. But I wasn’t really looking for a boyfriend since I lived abroad and had a bucket full of dreams to chase up solo, so I thought, great, this attitude of his will make me emotionally protected from attachment, yet distracted, which was exactly what I needed for a time being. I really just needed “something” not “the thing”. This will do just fine.
Playing with this situation seemed super safe because I would NEVER be with a guy with whom I have zero in common with. It was an emotionally bulletproof scenario. He is 12 years older and I always wanted to be someone’s “25 year old”, so why not flirt with the idea? And he wanted me very much. And that was very attractive.
He was a book example of a “must have control over everything” type of a guy. He was extremely snappy, anything and everything would throw him off balance and he would just snap, shout out that I wasn’t doing something right, and if I protested he would often get even more aggressive and start calling me names ( a total 3 year old tantrum of “you are stupid, you are a peasant, you are retarded”). Those bursts would last a mere few seconds a few times in a 24 hour day. But he would never do it in front of other people brutally like that.. In front of others he would soften it a bit and make fun of me in a borderline socially acceptable manner. I hated it. I felt like stuck between not revealing to his “friends” what kind of monster he actually was and keeping up with what I had of my dignity left since they didn’t know me well. He was feeding off of it. I noticed that his behavior with his friends was also very interesting (I am a psychologist by degree so I can say this XD). Since he is not your typical nice guy and his selfishness was preventing him from getting strokes via exchange for giving them, the only way he could get them was to have people laughing AT him. So he would tweak his anti-social behavior in a way to cross into being funny territory so that he would come across as that “funny weird guy”. What a grotesque behavior..
During nights was a completely different story though. During nights I was hugged as a teddy bear, squeezed and snuggled and never let go.. and at first I was confused but later I thought ok, that is the stuff that matters, right? Trusting someone next to you while going unconsciousness and wanting them so close, I considered that to represent the truth about his feelings for me and it felt good to have that honor. So I stayed. I stayed because of the nights and the squeeze. Stupid me. It was a trap. Nights never failed. Even during the day, between those tantrums, he was utterly and completely dedicated to us. And he always wanted me more, again and again, year after year. He was always there waiting for me at the airport, every next meeting was already scheduled, sometimes half a year down the calendar, he would spend days after days cooking for me, taking initiative for fun date nights, we traveled quite a bit too. But then I would do something wrong, and he would explode, and then I would get upset, and then he would get upset that I got upset and so on and so forth until it ended up that we waged a freaking war over the fact that I haven’t shaken the toothbrush enough before putting it back into the cup. So in a way, it was like leading this double relationship where we were being totally emotionally dependent on our worst enemy. We had a very well organized, super fun charged relationship parallel to bursting out into utter war 78 times a day. I swear, now looking back to it all, he is bloody Jareth from the Labyrinth!
How do we get tangled into these bizarre situations?? I have a perfectly functioning brain!
Potential explanation? Flashback to my first ever relationship:
My first boyfriend told me “I love you but you are crazy” as he was leaving me forever. That sentence resonated with me through the future years.. And I suppose I found a partner that I deemed to be even crazier than me, one that can then handle my crazy (and reinforce that statement). I know I can be difficult sometimes, and in our early days I would notice that he would either stop me or completely ignore these glitches. Wow, I thought, I am safe here, I can be free of monitoring non-stop what I say and how I say it and just be myself, freely. It sounded like just what I need. So we will be just like one of those ” because of my mental disability I out up with your mental disability” cases. We often laughed about how “crazy” we both are. A play of broken people. Joke is on us now.
That is one side of the whole analysis as seen by me. There is the other one too. O.O (you don’t have to keep reading.. just a reminder).
Namely, I have an in-born tendency to create this “emotional safety zone” around people when I spend time with them, my game is to set up an emotional playground and start running around it. One has never refused to join me. I find it incredibly effortless to feel carefree and it turned out it is sort of contagious. I am also very sensitive to someone needing love and support. I can’t help paying attention to it when I notice it and the urge to help is just out of my power zone, I do it automatically. And this man… this man screamed of the need to be loved. And like a child to a candy cone there I was, flying to the rescue. Idiot. From the outside he seemed totally sorted. Career, home, hobbies, friends, steady, responsible, organized, successful, serious, a proper (perfect even) human. But those people are usually the fishiest, aren’t they? Society made, afraid to be tweaked by own personality. And I was first squinting at that with suspicion and once I noticed the horror underneath, I ran toward it like a lunatic.
And here I am now. Sad, exhausted, angry and pathetic.
Let me tell you just one of the anecdotes from our last day together. We are in Berlin, I flew there to visit him on his business trip. We are walking down the street towards the metro, and as we are getting closer we see a train coming in. “Do you wanna hurry so we can catch this one?” he asks. “Yes, let’s go.” I say. So we start running and when we enter the station we pass through a hallway and run up the stairs. As we were getting up the stairs I take out my ticket that I have to validate on a machine that was, up until that point, always on the actual platform. However, as we arrive to the platform, there are no ticket validation points.. so I start panicking realizing I can not enter the train because I don’t have a validated ticket. By that time he is already on the train as he has a monthly pass and no need to validate. So I am now caught in this situation where I have to choose to either stay alone on the station or enter the train without a valid ticket. As he doesn’t have roaming on his phone, and I know his temper, I enter the train. And as I tell him that I didn’t validate the ticket..he just… explodes.. “You f*ing moron, the ticket machines were in the hallway, we passed them by!!!” – “Why did’t you tell me as we were passing them by??” – “It’s not my f*ing problem to worry about your f*ing ticket, you idiot, you have no brains, I can’t believe what an imbecile you are!!” he is shouting at me in front of a train full of people.. This was THE moment for me.. it was the n-th time that day he snapped at me, after telling me stuff like that I am too cheerful when I say hello entering coffee shops and that I am a retard because I make coffee in a coffee press at home “like no normal people do”.. that was the moment where, after 5 years I finally felt defeated. Up to this point I was always ready to take on the fight, to either argue, argument, chill and re-try, nicely, appealing to reason. But this time I just felt that’s it. I can’t do it anymore.. you win. And that night he told me he wants us to end. I am looking back now at this situation from a year later and I am shocked probably as much as you are now reading this..
How I felt? Something like..
How dare you want to break my shine, how dare you want to kill in me my love for life. I wanted to give you some of my light, to share with you how great it is to be excited to be alive, and you wanted to kill that in me, turn me into a dull corpse. I hate you for it. I know it’s wrong but I will repeat it.. I hate you for it. Go to hell, and me too, for being into my fantasies and fictional happy endings so much that I actually believed you have the capacity to become an actual person with actual friends and human contact and get a destiny you deserve if only someone just showed you they believe in you. But you are officially a lost cause.. not by birth, but by choice, and THAT is what makes you a loser.
Ok, now that I got that out of the way..
The getting over phase:
Heart clings to stupid things. I have been here before so I know the tricks and sneaky moves of a broken heart. Hope is the worst. Hope is what prologues the suffering. Even if your reason is telling you that this is a good thing and that life holds more for you beyond this milestone, your heart somehow digs hope up from the back of your mind and sneakily clings to it.. you only notice all of a sudden these weird comfort feelings swelling up from within and when you inspect it, you see that you have run that movie in your mind where he calls you, or you ran into him in the world where he regrets his decision and you find yourself in his arms again. Its a killer getting rid of that comfort, of that imagination, because you are essentially getting rid of the only thing that feels good. It is cruel, and your heart will hate you for it.
I was convinced for a long time that what I felt for him was not love.. more like liking and comfort that through time created a habit, and what I have now is actually only a withdrawal crisis. It’s incredible how we can miss someone who we don’t love. Is the need for belonging (for someone to need us, to miss us) so reckless..? Such a scoundrel brain..
I think about it sometimes.. how dangerous it is to be loved by bad men.
After retrospective analysis I have realized that this is a real trap. We seek validation and if we don’t get it by good people, we will, often unaware, gravitate towards whoever offers it, and ignore the alarms. It’s like candy from strangers, you begin to realize (or even worse, not) that in order to get validation you seek you have to pay with putting up with abuse. But how did I get into this.. That’s a really hard thing for me to admit, but I am just throwing this out there in an attempt to empty the space under the carpet that may have been tripping me. I had an ok upbringing, loving parents, solid education, I am seemingly stable, successful by some so-called society standards. Maybe my strength was actually my weakness. My desire for more reliability, stability and discipline and better intellectual stimulation gave me a man that was a rarity in being able to provide me that, and not such a rarity in coming with a predator behavior towards a woman.
“Sometimes when you win, you lose.
And sometimes when you lose, you win. :)” – What dreams may come
Update: it’s a year later now.. It took me a good 4 months to get rid of the heartache. After the breakup we went on a trip together that we had already paid for, and after he still wrote to me a few times seemingly about practicalities but I think he was just lonely. I went to therapy and after I did as my therapist recommended and cut all contact with him I finally felt liberated and getting over was so much easier. 4 months is a pretty good time to get over a 5 year thing, I’d say.. but I really put a lot of effort into it. Like, I went full on, youtube videos, therapy, new projects, got my life coaching qualification sorted (woho) .. I shall conjure up a bullet point blog on what I found most effective when wanting to get over someone..at some point. 😀 Until then, stay strong ladies. “If we are all alone, we are together in that too!!” – P.S. I love you
It is morning, a couple in a camper van is sobering up with daylight. He grabs a box from the shelf, “Would you like a cigarette?” – “I would love a cigarette.”
After inhaling the first smoke, she leans against the blinds, separates them and takes a peak at the casually swelling waves: ” There is nothing else out there except this, is there?”
A ray of light shines on her arm, she is reminded that the warm love nest is dissolving.. She raises her look from the sunlight arm and looks at him, although the note is to self more than to him in particular: ” The quicker we get through this, the sooner we get again to where the honey runs”.
I have just dug up a goodbye letter I wrote to my first boyfriend after we broke up (8 years ago). And I was shocked what I read in the first sentence.
To give some context and summarize the backstory: he made me believe I was behaving like a crazy person, told me he loved me, then went his merry way. I was devastated, of course, so I put together a massive letter that summarized my flaws and confessions about my wrongdoings (*what I judged were my wrongdoings), and it helped me give some closure to the whole thing.
I am looking at that letter now and the first sentence reads:
“… and then I found you, I snuggled up on your chest and refused to grow further as a person. This is the price I now have to pay.. ” Meaning he judged me for putting him into the center of my universe and did’t pursue my own dreams. And later he left me because I didn’t do much in life. I was being punished for staying put. (This sounds so silly when I read it now).
That breakup left me traumatized for years. Aside from completely immobilizing my plans, it put my hopes and dreams on hold. I swore then that I would NEVER ever neglect my self-growth for a man and that whatever good feelings I was receiving from that relationship, whatever needs that filled, I will just have to find them out in the world. So I did.
Fast forward 8 years, my boyfriend left me. We had a beautiful fun stable long-distance 5 year relationship, and then all of a sudden he decided that he cannot date someone who is still finding her way around life, because he misses me 3 weeks a month and I am just all over the place trying to put my life together while doing a PhD, a coaching qualification, caring about my grandparents and traveling the world, while trying to break into the creative industry and having a long distance relationship.
…?!
I must admit, this gave a wee bit of comfort, because however you turn your cards, someone will reject you for one reason or the other.. At least, after this breakup, I have seen the world.
You will be rejected at some point in life.. maybe many times, reasons of choice vary in many colorful ways. They all hurt. Sometimes like hell*. Seems like there is no right path to take, no right decision to make to guarantee yourself that intoxicating majesty of all feelings of “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, Is just to love and be loved in return“.
The End
-H.
*sometimes like all meaning of life has been sucked into oblivion and the world is now gray forever more.
P.S. “…if we’re all alone, then we’re all together in that too.” – from P.S. I Love You
I googled today “Indiana Jones like adventures around the World”.
An eye catching organization came up that took people to remote places around the world to introduce them to some exotic challenges and up-skill them with the most unusual tricks. However, the application age was 16-30 years old. Darn.. My FOMO instantly awoke and started fuming! How could I have missed this in my life!? Am I to lame to still crave new thrills? Would I even be able to enjoy such an adventure when I am trillion years old even if I find someone to take me? I can’t enjoy late drunken nights anymore and numerous other things I totally would have 10 years ago. Would I enjoy this as much as I would have 10 years ago? Have I missed out forever on such a special thrill of for ex. 12 people camping in a cave, talking big dreams around a camp fire?
Then I remembered..
What the hell? I KNOW this is stupid talk! I already had this talk with myself some 15 years ago! (I should summon up some of that fresh-human wisdom). When I was still a very vigorous soul (not long after I became old enough to philosophize, which was quite early on) I had the notion that the fact that young people seek thrills and adventures as a developmental phase, camouflages the true adventurers amongst them, and that the expectation of eventually being saturated with such thrills confused the ones who genuinely had the need forever. Those would later develop beyond the boundaries of traditional stiffening-with-age and develop into the new generation of dream makers. And if someone is a true seeker, aging is doing them a small favor even, by peeling off all the layers of “fake” from real opportunities that pop up along the path making it easier to spot where treasures in life lie. True “fairy dust seekers” become more sophisticated through the years and polish their hunt for the meaningful. There are things worth digging for (a topic of its own).
However, regardless of being convinced of this throughout the years, to my surprise, I found that the momentum of majority’s behavior is swaying me in a dangerous direction. Sometimes it tricks me into believing I am out-of-order for still wanting the same thrills and being excited about the same ideas that were my drive when I was 25. I swing between understanding everyone, on one side and understanding me, on the other. Then I take a long and honest look, and it is more than obvious.. I don’t want what most want or already have (and that is yet another other topic). It looks sad and empty. And if there is a potential to find some real stuff, well then.. there is really no choice, is there? And let us never forget..
Curiosity and thrill thirst come from genuine need, not desire.
Nearing 30, something scary starts happening. You start doing the unthinkable, opening THE unspeakable. You knock on the forbidden door to the OTHER side, the following part of your life – your whole life. Up to this point you were playing with your plans and fantasies, completely unaffected by the finality of life, knowing something comes after. Peeping through to the other side was in the future, sealed by the lack of necessity. But now getting old, with your coping mechanisms at full throttle, nearly underneath your consciousness, creeping, there it comes.. your plans start stretching into the far future.. 30s..40s.. into the rest of your life. But the rest of your life is the one that contains your death, your end, after which there is no more..
One year into living in London I was this, as the internet says, “permanently exhausted pigeon”, from all the work, stress, confusion and toxic life that I neither had the time nor motivation to write blogs. So I am writing this one retrospectively, looking backwards through memory, so I will keep it short and sweet.
Even though I was technically making enough money daily so I could spin a barely dignified lifestyle, I was still going home every month for few days which considerably cut my work days per month, which in turn lowered my monthly budget. In addition to going home, traveling around seemed to impose itself as priority so I was out traveling a lot (could have been that I saw it as an escape from the misery as well as actually being productive for my bucket list which is the only thing I seemed to be good at.. or thought I was good at), I was impuls-buying plain tickets and not budgeting properly, and as a result often experienced a lot of stress due to not having enough money to buy healthy food, pay rent (I always did pay rent on time but managed to earn the money very very last minute, sometimes quite literally), and let alone socialize.
I experienced my first ever anxiety attack and had fatigue and unusual blackouts on the tube coming back from work, frequently. Work was miserable. I worked for a catering agency that introduced me to this whole new world of hospitality, which is nothing short of a bloody horror story. I HATE waitressing. More about that later.
I lived in this non-isolated room in east London where nothing ever happened. My room was freezing, it was moldy and there was seldom hot water in the shower. But it was cheap and the people were nice, so I stayed there for.. nearly 2 years actually. This was a very bad choice now looking back. The cold air (and it was as low as 6°C at times due to heating problems) was making me depressed, and the moldy walls ill. I was getting colds every couple of months. I spent all my time off work being tucked in bed with an electric blanket not having the spirits to do anything else. I couldn’t think straight, and it was frustrating. I was not doing the things I came to London for, not even one, not even started. So what was the point of it all? I wasn’t even exposing myself to information because I was not meeting new people. I haven’t made a single friend my first year in London. I simply couldn’t afford to go out. And even when I could, I was feeling so tired and down that I just couldn’t torture myself longer to go out.
All of this combined made me age a lot. I always had good skin and looked younger than my age. Then one day I woke up and realized I looked like hell; I touched my arm and realized my skin is saggy… It was such a shock for me. My skin was always to tight and perfect. I had aged in that one year in London more than I did in the previous 5 years!!
Back to work. I counted down every minute of every damn shift. The type of work was not the problem, it was the treatment from middle management that was very challenging to my personality. I spent my whole life being good at stuff, and, for the first time now I had to make mistakes, just because someone decided that on a whim. It. Was. Torture. Yet I take pride in not caving right there and finding a 9-5 happy slavery position in a company, with my masters degree. That would have then put my moving to UK simply obsolete. So I kept on it, hoping for a better freelance lifestyle in the future.
Then one day I met a girl that told me I was crazy for waiting and gave me a list of promo and hostessing agencies that both paid better and a had a more dignified position in the labor chain. She changed my life. A few months into it, I slowly started getting hosting and promo jobs and couldn’t wait for the moment when I would leave catering forever behind and finally have more money and time to live, not survive.
All was not so dark though. Interestingly enough, in between those long dark periods I was getting such highly rewarding experiences both professionally and joy-wise from the life in this epicenter. I was storming through my coaching qualification process and started seeing clients which was very exhilarating and I was happy to discover that more I coached, more I enjoyed it. Also I got bits and pieces of working in the art world which is the sole 100% meaningful experience you can have. So life in London seemed to show a lot of potential.. just very veeeery slowly.
It was always the plan to move to London “for a while”. Don’t ask me why, it was just a must. And, 26 years into my life, I made it happen. Was not really that difficult, I just bought a ticket, packed a bag and jumped on a plane.
Hardest thing was leaving my dog (I am completely aware of how this sounds to those who have no dogs). But I somehow managed to compromise in a way that I will be frequently visiting. This time I have something to come to aside from family (dogs included) and that just makes it exciting on both sides of the road.
All other crap like finding an apartment was a technicality.
It was my second move to London, or rather I like to say I finally decided it was time to go continue the life I started last year.
I had a ticket to a Hozier concert, that I treated myself with as a celebration for moving, as well as a motivation to sit on that plane. It was my first taste of London – the Round house. What a true delight. I need these things to feed my soul.
I had enough money to pay for rent/deposit and one more month’s rent while I already imagined having to start some work immediately in order to have enough to pay next month.. and the wheel to start spinning. I had no clear plan, and no help. All by me, start from the scratch. There was something strangely exciting about it. I always imagine myself as able to create. This time it was a life.
Behold the marvelous options you have when looking for a 350 pound per month room in London!
The British culture seems polite at first and a promise of a better life style messes with your vision of the future. The cultural shock was anything but pleasant. When you are in trouble instead of “how can I help” you are greeted with “I don’t give a damn”. After Serbia, Spain and Portugal this seems like a totally different atmosphere. Robocop land.. world of “was it in the contract?”
When my ex-roommate decided not to return my last year’s deposit, my budgeting totally collapsed. From a planned 250 first aid money I had literally 30 pounds to live on for the next month. Well, I was thinking, except stooping to that level of a sleazy small person to get back at a sleazy small person, and getting back the deposit by force, there really is no other option. 30 pounds will have to do.
But then out of the blue, from no opportunity at all, one suddenly popped up! (we are so limited in our imaginations sometimes). I moved to a new apartment (not the one from the picture 😀 ) and by a crazy line-up of events I found a job that pays on a weekly basis and my one month mini budget transformed into a two week budget. It was my first small win.
Then right before I was seated on a plane to go home, I landed the big paycheck, the one, the spinning one! Right about enough money to cover one more month of rent. The wheel was spinning. The game was on!!
“Captain Pan calculated, after consulting the ship’s chart, that if this weather lasted they should strike the Azores about the 21st of June..” – J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
It was only one year earlier when I was on an island somewhere south of India, flipping through hours of warm evenings reading books I never had the time to read, when I first read this sentence above. It tickled my mind. It was from Peter Pan. I was reading it for the first time in my life (how embarrassing). Sometimes out of boredom you do something that makes the funniest twists in your life.
I’ve heard about the Azore islands once before, in a story that I might write about once it finishes… I knew they existed, but I left them to tick around the back of my mind until “some day”.
The problem with some-day plans is that they tend to get stuck in the future. Thankfully, there is the force of your sub consciousness that balances your plans by bringing random exposures of information about the ones you don’t really contemplate, first. I’ve never been known to fight my sub-consciousness. I kind of spoiled it rather. Imagination takes me over more often than not. But, moving on..
Months of Sri Lankan adventures later, my path was leading me back to Europe and I was moving to Portugal, as a part of my studies. A spirit spring cleaning in Portugal – a joy. The country turned out to be a goldmine with its unknown discoveries in nature, culture, and experience. I was totally surprised and totally hipped to explore it all.
I was looking at the map one day when I noticed something was missing..
“Portugal, … “ The picture of Neverland popped out in front of my eyes as I remembered the Azore islands officially belong to Portugal! I scrolled gmaps to the left, then a bit more, then a bit more… and there they were. Azore islands – right in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Hello “some day”!!
Azores are a group of 9 volcanic islands located in the North Atlantic Ocean. They are remote and peculiar. The place is associated with Atlantis, probably due to their geographical location as well as volcanic nature. It is also the only place alongside London mentioned in the Peter Pan adventures. If you look at the picture of Nederland, very conveniently you realize it is a volcanic island. Never mind actually.. just some things going through my brain when I drift away..
So, I was flying above the Atlantic Ocean thinking of the best part of the trip I am looking forward to; one of my life’s greatest desires was coming true on this trip. I was to swim with dolphins. For as long as I can remember I wanted to see them. But the real ones, the ones swimming free in their natural habitat! This was it, they were all over Neverland. I felt chills thinking about it.
Neverland, marvelous and mysterious, every child’s dream.
It is no wonder this is the place J.M. Barrie mentions in his most loved story; the place is filled with energy and weird sense of openness. In stories it is associated with mysterious Atlantis, and once you’re there you can clearly see why. How can a place brimming with dolphins and whales be anything less than magical!
I landed in Horta, one of the central islands, in the morning; my host was waiting for me. I was welcomed in a home not far from the Airport. Another traveler was already there and it took us about 10 seconds to realize we are joining journeys, at least for a while. Our host was wonderful, his family holds a big beautiful land of exotic plants, and we were welcomed to indulge ourselves in getting lost in it. Woods of exotic trees, bright colors and sharp smells. It was magical.
One scene from the gardens.
This was my first volcanic experience and everything was new and strange. We hitchhiked up to Capelinhos, where we walked on black sand that spread perfectly still for miles ahead. You lose sense of .. well.. everything while looking at scenes that never end. We had a good day of island exploration, found our way back to Horta and watched the night fall as Steve Job’s yacht was leaving the marina. In the evening we went back to our host’s house and I slept sound and peaceful for the first time in months.
Capelinhos, Faial island
Juicy part of the quest was just behind the next morning.. starting on the neighboring island Pico.
“Ready to go?” – said the friendly face behind a wheel.
It was my new host. We drove to a beautiful family house in the countryside. There was a windmill across the street. From its top you could see the ocean and the neighboring islands. The shore is filled with tiny bays where weird birds gather during night and make a “festa”. My host and his lovely daughter took me for a walk in the late evening; I was hearing noises from the dark, unheard before, scratchy and scary, unnatural.. it was the birds. To this day I have no idea how these birds actually look like, but I can recall the wicked sounds, screeches, demented songs in the dark. You can’t see them really, just hear them, then as you get closer and closer they slowly hush. Spooky. I was happy to sleep indoors that night.
Pico island.
Next morning was the morning. It was the 21st of June, bright skies and happiness in my heart.
“Ready?” said again my host. Oh I am ready, I have been ready my whole life for this day. One day when I’m old and children start gathering around a fire, I’ll begin this one with:
Let me tell you about the time I went swimming with dolphins and met a lady from Atlantis…
There was 10 of us, on the boat. They forgot my wetsuit and I didn’t bother hiding the disappointment. How the hell am I supposed to fully enjoy the swim If the Atlantic freeze is biting my ass.. we are in the middle of it, damn it!
“Once you’re in the water with them, you won’t notice the cold.” came a lovely voice from the lady sitting in front of me. I have spotted her before, a middle aged white hair lady with a blue diamond on her forehead.. but I was too busy noticing the missing wetsuit to really see anything else. “grrr” I thought to myself.. what does she know. Quite a lot- it turned out. I’ll come back to that later; the marine biologist in the meantime said ok to jumping into the water and I bent over the edge of the boat!
“jump!.. follow the clicks and whistles. Good luck!”.. said she, smiling.
My dear mother of everything.. How truly marvelous this planet is to have creatures like these in its waters. First when I jumped into the water I saw.. nothing.. then I stopped berating.. I was hearing whistles and clicks in the distance. I followed them. It was a bit spooky not seeing anything in the water and then suddenly out of the blue emerges in front of you something, first a blurred image that is getting bigger and clearer.. and then.. there they were… beautifullneses swimming all around me.. I was hypnotized. Happy and so fast, playful swimming in pars or groups.. My mind went numb. I forgot totally of myself, that I was there and all that stuff that usually jumps on your brain, just silenced. I was observing the view, amazed. Few seconds passed, then they disappeared. The only thing left was a cloud of bubbles and distant echoes of clicks and whistles.
They were the masters of the waters. I went out, couldn’t think of anything.. processing. The boat went on until the dolphins started following us again. For some reason, it is fun for them to follow boats, I guess the sound of the engine is like a rave party for them. In the second jump I saw them briefly but then they waved their happy tales and left only a cloud of bubbles. Soon though I could hear the clicks again… so clear and loud.. low and high peaches, they were talking to each other, I felt like eavesdropping.. I could hear them loudly but I couldn’t see them! I was confused. Then, all out of nowhere, four of them just appeared from underneath me!! Whoa… what a shock, they fly by so close, probably just to inspect. One of them turned a bit to have a better look. I almost felt I should do something to introduce myself. Previously, on the boat they told me I can sing to them if I like, that they may sing back. I remembered that and very ridiculously made some noises through my mask and almost choked.. I love these creatures.
Another species was spotted near by, Risso’s dolphin. I’ve never seen the species before, big gray dolphins with white scratches.. They were unusually close considering they don’t like human presence. The Atlantis lady turned to me and winked. The marine biologist leaned to me and said, “you can jump in with them as well, if you like. Try to catch them”. She didn’t finish the sentence I was already in the water paddling away towards the beasts.. but ay, faster then me they were. They told us later scratches made on their body were made by fellow dolphins and in fights with squids (their favorite food), these sometimes make them completely white. The ones we saw were definitely very white… Now that I think about it.. they let me swim with them. O.o
It is beautiful when you can see them through the water.
The trip finished, and the lady came to say goodbye. She was a healer, and all those people I didn’t notice on the boat she was taking to see dolphins as part of a therapy. She has many more stories than she told me that day.. and one day I will go back to hear them all.
Sometimes, you find treasure when you take a break from seeking them. Be aware of those moments, don’t question the way, only the feeling. ^^
*
The highest peak of Portugal is a top of a volcano on an island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. It is here, on the Azores. Pico is the name of the island and the mountain, Piquinho – the name of the very peak, and my home for the next night. The idea came from my new companion, although due to a certain sandals situation I ended up climbing it alone (I carry my hiking boots “just in case” everywhere I go, and voila, finally paid off :D)). I was climbing it in the middle of a night; someone told me the sunrise is breathtaking (I didn’t know it was because you spent the previous 6 hours climbing the damn thing). It was by far one the craziest experiences I had.
– “..and you plan to go up alone.. during the night”? – asked the mountain house guy.
– “Yes, I heard the sunrise is really nice from up there.. and I have full equipment (I pointed at my visibly empty bag), and I have experience”. I was zipping the room for rejection.
– “Well … alright, but you have to watch the safety video”
On my way I was, the volcano, darkness, my lamp ( a key chain with a mini lamp ) and few rays of moonlight.
You couldn’t see the markings on the road in the darkness, and it was impossible at some parts to make a difference between a path and all the rest, so I pretty much ended up following my guts. Thankfully, I had a general idea which way to go- it was up! On the way up I managed to stop a couple of times to just realize where I was and I why the hell did I think this was a good idea. I was viewing the Atlantic ocean from the middle of it, hanging from a volcano, the moon was spreading over the peaceful water, I knew that in the close distance somewhere giant seas creatures were disturbing the peace of the surface. My view was gliding over distant mountaintops of the neighboring islands, and the low clouds illuminated from above. Chilled passed my body in perfect silence, and I continued upwards.
Piquinho was to be the last part of the journey, the mountains latest creation. I could see it, standing tall in the darkness.
About some hours or forever later, I have reached the crater.. but the fun part was just beginning. What I didn’t know was that the Piquinho ( a mountain on top of a mountain) was a big pile of rolling stones. This is where not having a proper light source will bite my ass.
After I successfully climbed 2 whole meters in about 20 minutes I began wondering whether somewhere in the safety video I was forced to watch, I missed the part where they say not to climb up the latest part. But I couldn’t remember, so I continued rolling. I finally pushed through to some more solid rock, and as I touched a big one just above my head I realized it was completely hot. “O-o” – I thought.. I do hope I didn’t interrupt an eruption. For some reason the first thing that crosses my mind in such situations is a catastrophe being announced on world news and my parents watching it. I am more worried about them being worried, then about myself at that moment; I mean, at least I’m not at home being so bored out of my mind that I watch the news other people make.
I listened … nothing happened. The rocks were simply warm and I honestly though it to be the coolest thing ever. I hate 4am’s at mountaintops, they are freaking freezing! It is pinching when it comes to the latest hours of darkness, that’s the part I liked the least about mountains. This one had central heating, damn luxurious! I found a small rock on which I could sit and took a rest. Rest led to unfolding my sleeping bag, and unfolding my sleeping bag led to sweet dreams. I was woken up few hours later by a group of hikers passing by, on a normal path I never noticed, just a few meters to my right.
I reached the top just before the Sun peaked through. The great thing about the mountains’ central heating is that you can just sit there, enjoying the view, breathing the fresh crispy air while your but is warm on the ground. As the light grew stronger on one side, the shadow of the mountain grew darker on the other. Moments later-there it was, the shadow of the mountain! It didn’t even cross my mind that that’s why this sunrise was so popular – if a volcano rises over a sea, It casts a perfect triangle shadow on the surface of the water. Spreading from the foot of the mountain out to the ocean, one of the rarest phenomena I’ve ever seen ~ a black pyramid. I don’t really know what else to say here.. Some things can only be shared by pointing a finger.
Shadow of mountain Pico.
*
The road went on.. from dragon islands, longest 20km hitchhikes of my life and lands of boiling rotten-egg smelling ponds.. I will only stop by one of the remaining nights, the last one, to mention the boiling rotten-egg smelling ponds. A little luck stumbled upon my way near them. My returning flight had a one night layover in São Miguel.. that’s how the story slowed down again.
Few hours before, I received a message from an unknown future friend, telling me that he and another friend have a car, and would be happy to show me a bit of Sao Miguel island, and who cares that it’s night. So two brilliant young Sao Miguel couchsurfers came to pick me up from the airport and give me a zipped tour of the island.
Mysterious smoke is coming from the ground, it smells like rotten eggs; there are ponds of it, with fresh bubbles coming to the surface and people bathing inside XD
I love this place, and all the uses one can make from egg smelling natural boiling water.
For this night, best I hoped for was a nice nap on the airport, or rather next to it, because they close the airport during the night. Instead I got to go swimming! 😀 We managed to charm the counter person in an already closing pool to let us have a 15min dip in the water. It .. was… awesome.
I was told stories how people go camping and put food deep in the ground and few hours later it is cooked just from the heat below. The scenes around were misty and green. Green, green is everywhere, all over the island, beautiful and fresh! I was lucky to have caught some of the scenery just before sundown.
Forest paths, green fields, islands and the ocean- always in the background, smelly water and fun stories; there I had it- The Sao Miguel experience, zipped in one night. Many thanks to my new friends who gave me another spin of light in my Azorean adventures.
You are born with a pile of life-credit. You can imagine it like a hypothetical sack of gold you are given at birth to spend on whatever you like, and when it empties, you start dying. It is up to you how you are going to manage it.
For the initial part of your life this credit covers your health in a general sense, resilience to trash food and drinks, unhealthy habits, polluted air, bad mental hygiene, toxic thoughts, stress, it protects your enthusiasm, stamina, energy levels etc. More or less you are sorted by the age of cca 20-25 and by this time life doesn’t show yet (I am talking about an average middle class life that I am witnessing on a daily basis).
After you hit that bottom of the sack, your skin starts getting saggy, your thighs start piling up more hard cellulite, your face has more permanent expressions. The destructive things you do to your body pile up. You start losing your playfulness in exchange for bitterness or even worse – indifference to the world around you. There have been too many heartbreaks, too many betrayals, too many unfairnesses. Daily life bruises you. Because let’s face it – “it sucks”.
If you don’t “use your wish to create more wishes”, or in other words, if you don’t invest some of that credit to build more credit, you start showing it. After the consequence-free (relatively speaking) part of your life is up, you start demonstrating your value by how much of that credit you saved, physical, mental and exuberant spirit wise. Just like with financial savings, this is when your life savings start showing.
It is possible to refill your sack, BUT you have to spend a lot of time learning how to do it and make peace with the fact that the sack can never be refilled as fast as it is being spent, however, you can slow the process down drastically.
And let me tell you something, maintaining a high life credit is not by far an average difficulty challenge, it requires a highly above average aptitude, sadly. And the difficulty of refilling your credit grows exponentially with how much closer you are to the end of it. That is the defeating part. Ergo, many do not even go for it. Or, fortunately for them, don’t even realize there is a game to be played. It is worth mentioning here that creating a standard comfortable lifestyle where you will have a stable income, a comfy home, 2 children, nice holidays, an average possibility of getting cancer and a financially secured retirement is a moderate difficulty game and generally promoted as a “way to go”.
I will not get into detail on how you can make your credit last, mostly because I am still very far from being very good at it. But I can say that it requires hacking your story from multiple standpoints: physical, mental, philosophical, whatever… A path to contentment is massive and thorny but exciting and fruitful. Geronimo!
I know I can be difficult sometimes, and in our early days I would notice that he would either stop me or completely ignore these glitches. Wow, I thought, I am safe here, I can be free of monitoring non-stop what I say and how I say it and just be myself, freely. It sounded like just what I need. So we will be just like one of those ” because of my mental disability I out up with your mental disability” cases. We often laughed about how “crazy” we both are. A play of broken people. Joke is on us now. 
oolloum 