Reflections on a Year

As I prepare to board this plane, my heart is full and emotion surges through my body. I will be processing all that has happened for a time to come. Am I ready to return, to rejoin a path, to feel stability? Yes, I am ready. It is an adventure of a different name. Will I wander in the world again? Oh, I have no doubt.

I have gained and unloaded baggage this year, both literally and figuratively. I have explored the power of personal growth, of the mind's incredible ability to lift up and put down. I remind myself of the path of life: if I am not on a path that brings happiness, and with happiness comes peace, patience and kindness, then I must change my path. 

Reflections on this past year of living. Whew. I think back and my mind skips and leaps among the countless life affirming and life changing experiences. El Camino, Nepal, Antarctica, Israel, meeting friends old and new across the globe. Falling in love, and making the decision to fall out of it. Musing on a future, going back to school and the joy and direction that brings. Encountering loneliness and also the greatest moments of acceptance and exhilaration. I have loved beyond words what this year has meant in the scheme of my life.

I think upon my favorite poem, "Ithaka" by Cavafy, particularly the last lines:

"Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. 

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now. 

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean."

I am finding my voice, my evolution. This is not the end of a series of moments, it's a continuation of saying "I am here, now, and that is blissfully enough." 

Aloha my America.

Last Stop: Ireland

Oh Ireland, you are as I imagined: a misty, green wonderland of pubs flowing Guinness, live music spilling into the streets. Lovely beyond words, it was unexpected Ireland that has become my last stop on almost eleven months of travel. 

Dahlia, my Israeli friend recently moved to Dublin for work, and invited me to stop by before heading home. And here I find myself, in a relatively quick jaunt to Ireland before heading home tomorrow. 

After an adrenaline adventure of driving a manual car on the left side of the road while navigating from an offline google map in the gathering dusk, I made it to my reunion with Dahlia only a half hour late. Catching each other up over fresh herb tea, we enjoyed our friendships that can span borders, time and my lack of Facebook. 

The next day I strolled Dublin as Dahlia worked before heading out to the southwest corner of the island to Kerry County and the famous Ring of Kerry. With the long summer days, we arrived in the kick off town of Killarney at 10 pm with a few minutes of daylight to discover a ridiculously cute B&B within walking distance of the pub lined central streets. Calling it an early night, we geared up for the next days drive around the notoriously narrow and windy Ring of Kerry. 

The 180 km drive around the Kerry peninsula is Ireland in all it's splendid glory. Pastures of roaming sheep and black Kerry cows, dramatic plunging cliff, misty islands and an all together romanticism conjuring images of women turning into seals. We took two days exploring the quintessential Irish towns dotting the ring, crossing by ferry to Valentia Island, and walking along bays of dramatic shades of green landscapes. 

Scene: Tetrapod Trackway on Valentia Island in Ireland. 

Woman in purple coat: "So, like have you seen one of the tetrapods?"

Me: "Um, the actual animal?"

Her: "Yeah."

Me: "No."

Her: "So that long (5 minute walk) walk was for NOTHING!"

As we are looking at 385 million year old tracks of the first known evidence of vertebrates crawling from sea to land. Wow. 

Another momentous occasion was drinking my very first Guinness, and then second, third and so on in the pubs of Kenmare. Dahlia and I had a proper night of long toasts to friendship, love and life as we made friend with locals and travelers alike. 

Carriage ride!

My, I admire this girl. She is just fabulous, intelligent and kind. 

Returning to Dublin yesterday, we headed out for a night of dancing in Dublin with a few of Dahlia's friends until the wee morning hours. 

Trinity College. 

Today was a Dublin tour, park lounging and the World Cup finals. Right now, I am watching Sex and the City with Dahlia and her lovely Irish roommate Elaine, how American and single lady fabulous is that. 

Tomorrow, I will board a plane for the United States. Like the Wallflowers lyrics, "Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same." Reflections are coming in waves, of my time walking with aloha. Wonderfully though, in this moment, I am living in the present and happy. 

well...

Well. Breaking up sucks. There you have it. A tumult of emotion, a mind distanced from reality. The anti-living-in-the-moment. That's breaking up. And that has been my life (if it hasn't been a bit obvious from the previous blog posts) for the past two and half months or so. Breaking up in all sorts of ways. I suppose the reasons for my decision to end my relationship with Michael are mute and don't really need to be discussed here (mostly due to some latent respect for him). But this is my forum to triumph and also to bitch, right? Right.

I am back in Germany now, with Maria and the girls. I feel like I haven't been a very attentive friend while I have been here, as distracted as I am about my emotions surrounding Michael. It is ironic actually, because when I was here before Paris, I felt high as a kite, and unencumbered by break up shittiness. I suppose I was in an extended phase of denial for awhile after breaking it off. It wasn't until the last ten days or so in Paris that I began to enter the "oh shit, have I ruined my life" phase, which is a horrible place to be mentally. I unloaded on my friends, pumped myself up, wrote and reflected and ate an obscene amount of nutella crepes, cheese sandwiches and falafels, but I felt just empty every day. My only moments of solace were drifting off to sunlit naps in the manicured parks of Paris. Other than that, I felt not quite anxiety, but more like confusion and unrest.

Today I felt a different phase. The I am f-ing pissed phase, where I am just angry about all the things that went wrong in our relationship and all the time spent trying to repair damage. It all feels like a giant waste, and it is heightened by the sense that I am alone because I don't know what he is feeling. Another strange thing of breaking up, I shared so much with this one person, the person I would talk to about all my woes, but instead our suffering is separate but together. Well, actually, I think he is feeling okay about the whole thing based off his response to my somewhat desperate e-mail I sent him last week. Breaking up sucks.

I am trying to be positive, to stick to my guns, to remind myself the reasons why I ended things. But right now it just feels like there are so many things left unsaid, so many emotions left unexplored, and instead I need to come to terms on my own for myself. How hard is that? The entire time I have been in a relationship, I have given myself to someone else, and now it is time to remove myself from that feeling and be completely for me, to only see my own opportunity. It's hard. I continually find myself slipping into the what ifs, and those are gut wrenching. Even, "what if he reads this". But I don't think he will.

My relief is coming in external waves: encouragement from friends, reading break up quotes and articles online, trying to regain order by making mundane lists of life's chores. I need to get my head back in my own game, which of course, is easier said than done. I am exalting in the moments of clarity and peace that I have when I think of our relationship, and counting all of those little feelings among the more aggressive negative feelings as progress. Every day is progress.

I'm sending these thoughts out into the void without the expectation of a response, more to relieve my own relentless mind. To remember that this year has been about incredible highs, but life is life and it can be hard sometimes. I wouldn't give up the things I have learned and the romance of this year for anything. We love, we fight, we are happy, and we are sad. Michael loves kaleidoscopes, which is how I am seeing life. Sometimes, we can only see a tiny slice of life and it is a mishmosh of colors and angles. Twist our view a little bit, and it can still be the same colors but ordered entirely differently. Take your focus away from the chaos of the colors, pull your eye away from the narrow view and we can see the grander life all around as the entire world envelops us. Today I am looking into the glass of our relationship.