Cambridge: The Last Goodbye

It is done: the boxes are packed and in a new apartment. Cambridge is history. And with it most things that have made that experience. The job I came there for is no longer reality, the friends that became family in my house have also left and I said a final goodbye to some people who couldn't move on with me. Everything is changing. And once again, it couldn't happen fast enough. I am on a plane to Spain to celebrate the wedding of two of my best friends. The whole week, everyone that means anything to me in Cambridge will share a villa with me in honor of our friends' marriage, and then all of them embark on a new journey. Mine goes to London. And away from the person Cambridge made me.

My first day in Cambridge, I was filled to the brink with confidence, pride and fulfillment. Without indulging again in how these reserves were depleted by the beginning of this year I knew my time in Cambridge was limited. Today, I know that the feeling I had that day initiated the path that now leads me to leave the Shire. "This is a lovely place but I don't really see myself staying here", I said. I abandoned my plan to buy a flat there within three weeks. I did not see myself stay any longer than "two summers". As I sit on this plane to enjoy the last sun rays of summer 2018, the second one since moving to England, I cannot believe how accurate I was. I ended up leaving, on the dot, at the end of my second summer - as if I had always known.

By the end of this experience, I was no longer the person that arrived. The bright sky that was the first few weeks in Cambridge was overshadowed with thick clouds and at some points, the rain became so strong it felt like it was washing away everything that I loved and cared about there. The single best thing that happened to me at this time was 220 Victoria Road, my home. The luck I experienced living there exceeds the one necessary to win the lottery. I won the human lottery that brought individuals into my life that saved it. Maybe I would never have realized the significance of friendship if those clouds hadn't tried to drown me. There I was, in a hospital, having my friends throw out a life vest for me. Simply because they wanted to. My years of genuinely throwing my friendship, care and love at people who didn't appreciate it were done. Care for people who didn't care about me at all started feeling bad, yes, but it had to so that today I can see how much of a blessing it is to give love to those who love you back and how much of a ridiculous waste of time it is to wait for everyone else.

Out of that family that formed in the walls of my house, we are all facing change. This is our last hoorah before we acknowledge that the amazing time we had together is now coming to an end. This is Friends, season 10, episode 22, "The Last One". Two of us moved to opposite ends of London, one is departing to Miami the day after the wedding, two people will now be married to each other and Antonio is moving into my room because his girlfriend from the States moved in. Each and every one of us is facing a monumental change and I refuse to believe that it's a coincidence that it's happening for all of us within the same week. It's fucking serendipity. This wedding is our finale. And then, for the tenth time, there is nothing but a fresh start left after.

Leaving the good is harder than the bad but old habits die hard. There are goodbyes in Cambridge I didn't want to say. Others took a while to muster up the courage to utter. I have no interest in continuing to invest another second of my time into some people who used to dominate my everyday life. Cambridge was full of those who I should have never invested in. So while it introduced me to possibly some of the best friends I'll ever have, it taught me the most valuable lesson that I have to be more selective in who I allow into my life. There's been a colossal amount of disappointment in this one and a half year chapter and the fact there was also tremendous gain does not compensate that. Cambridge truly was the best and worst chapter of my life. Now that I am looking at it from the distance I see even more clearly how destructive it was. But since it's history, I am now free to only remember what I see worthy. And hopefully in time that will be the love I felt, the lessons I learned and the transformation it allowed in my career. And not the clouds.

Bye, bye, Cambridge!

Soundtrack Of My Life, Volume One

“Where words fail, music speaks.” 
― Hans Christian Andersen

I know, I know, I'm a writer and not a musician. I can't write music and my sophomoric writing on a blog or a journal does not equal the raw emotion that is coming from a song. I am not that artist. I am a talker, an expressionist, a storyteller. But I seldom make art. Yet, it is art that speaks to me most these days. The majority of the things that have affected my life in the last year, I am not free to talk about. And I struggle with that. So hearing songs that speak to me is like a horoscope: it gives you the feeling of there being someone on this huge planet that would, maybe, understand. You might hear a different thing than me right now but these songs are playing in my mind while I am abiding by the bar of metal in front of my mouth. It makes my relatively challenging emotions these days easier to bear and I am confident that is why these artists chose to make this music.

After the Storm - Mumford & Sons
This song has accompanied me through a lot of bad times. Right now is such a time. Not in a conventional way because everything that's happening is exciting and positive. But the year played host to some pretty traumatic experiences. Its fine, it happens, and I know there will be a time where I wear "flowers in my hair" to look back to it but, right now, I am scared of what's coming because of what happened. This song finds the perfect combination of words and tunes to teach the only life lesson worth learning in bad times: nothing is infinite! Not this, not the love that cannot be replaced, not happiness and, fortunately, not despair.

A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke
Oh, Sam Cooke. Even his songs about being a black man in the 60s strike a chord with me, even though I can obviously not relate. But I can to this one. I was on a lovely date about a month ago and the guy played this for me. WINNER! It's a reassuring feeling that there is music that expresses what I want to say but never would. I am not one to complain about how much running I had to do in my life. I am aware of my miseries and challenges so far but I like to look forward. With this song, I can. Because it doesn't matter how much I've run, change is and always has come. The essence of this song is preventing my freak out these days. Of course, I speak about my current challenges a lot, acknowledge this isn't the easiest time of my life but the prevalent feeling is that of hope. For change. And mine is only eight days away.

Wisely & Slow - The Staves
What I currently feel will last for a long time. It's easy to assume my feelings will last since nothing has changed about how I feel about the person I think of in this song in the last year or so, except my life. I already know that the day I stop mourning that loss will never come. I accept it and don't regret what I have done for this person. But "the song" and the question at the end of this one will never change: why is it you whispered when you needed to yell? I am thinking of a person that I know is not themselves and watching that has been hard. At the same time, I have also pretended and refrained from yelling when I probably should have. But the person on my mind needs to yell and stop whispering, express what is really going on. I guess I just want to know why they don't. Sucks to know I'll never know.

New Slang - The Shins
Another one of my all-time favorite songs has given me a new meaning these past few months. In relation to Cambridge, where I live, I have come to see how it is the manifestation of all of my feelings: super pretty and appearing to be a paradise but a trap, a curse, and my personal hell. I love this place but it has destroyed many things in me, first and foremost my self-esteem. Places can become tainted by what happened there and while it introduced me to the best friends I ever had it also truly turned me away from lots of good things inside of me. I need to leave it and look forward to severing the ties I have to this place in hopes it will sever the power the events still have over me.

Better - Regina Spektor

When dealing with "whatever", it is important to be true to oneself. I am trying to make myself do that by meditation and, of course, writing. But there are people around me that are not in touch with what they feel. In some cases I get it: they're, like me, scared to feel what they're feeling because it comes with consequences. I can relate to Regina Spektor when she wonders if any action I take can actually make someone feel better. Not if they're not ready to really face feelings, right? At least that's what I believe. I understand why it's easier to run away from feelings but this song at least makes me realize there's nothing I can do to wake people up. I can only stop running myself and I guess I'm not ready to do that either. 

Chicago - Sufjan Stevens
So, Sufjan Stevens has said this song is about running away. Sooo, does it work? I am living proof it does. Yo, Sufjan and I should have a beer sometime. I changed cities so many times, went on some crazy adventure like him, and usually fell in love immediately. All of my places have one man associated to them and it is fortunate that my move is coming up at a time when I am continuing to let Cambridge love pass. I made a lot of mistakes here. There are situations I can't move on from continuously walking past the venues of them happening. Maybe it's not the most efficient way to get over someone or something. Then again, I don't think I would have ever been able to move on from my Cairo love if I hadn't left Cairo. Moving on from people and cities have been the same experience for me. And I hope it works again next week.

Meditation: Do I NEED To Control the Mind?

When I started meditation, I didn't really know why. It was a principle I heard and read about mucho, and I was keen to learn how to be mindful. The idea of understanding feelings and moods better was appealing to me. In the end, thoughts are what have made and broke my life in the past; control over them could only be a good thing. I believe in what they call the Law of Attraction in which it is possible to make things happen in your life by thinking about them. That is how I landed my last job, how I fell in love with the last person and, frankly, why I sit here, in England, today. I wanted to get better at making good thoughts become the good life. But just by sitting down and meditating, that stuff did not manifest.

Meditating in Macedonia in 2015 without knowing it. 

I first started meditating in February after I was experiencing the repercussions of a traumatic event, a sort of a break-up and very unhealthy relationships with some people I saw every day. January had seen three very significant departures from my life, all heavily represented in my work and social life. My best friend at work left the office (and the Northern hemisphere), my best friend left London (and the continent) and the man associated with some rough times left my life but not my vision. It was a hard time. It was very hard. Overall, I still had my job, my purpose and all the other things that made my life full so the emotional implications of these departures were drowned out by overall happiness. Until I meditated. 

One day, when I was focusing on my breath, I experienced my first panic attack. It arose as my mind wandered to one of these people and the thought of them being gone from my life, me no longer seeing or hearing or feeling them, and I simply panicked. This reality was not a new thought; they already had been "gone". However, it obviously hadn't sunk in. I couldn't focus and I couldn't catch my breath. I experienced fear that they were gone. It was the first time in my life I experienced fear altogether. "Anxiety" was a term I never understood before. Until that day. Needless to say, it was a negative experience. I realized only weeks later, that it was a necessary one.

What had happened was a reaction in the brain; the same brain I had been trying to trick for months. Since almost exactly when I arrived in Cambridge, I had gotten addicted to a feeling of happiness and control which was an illusion. The absence of happiness and control is not necessarily unhappiness and chaos - a lesson I only learned now. Throughout my traumatic experiences of the last year, I had not allowed my brain to touch on the feelings that came with them: sadness, disappointment, the feeling of failure and, most importantly, shame. Until meditation actively tried to explore my brain and found those feelings. The meditation actively encouraged me to notice them. More so than just noting, I actually started feeling them. 

What followed was the awareness that I had failed one more thing: my thoughts. I hadn't been honest with myself and now I had gone on a quest to "really explore myself" - such foolishness. When you're trying to hide some bad experiences in your brain, or in other words, attempt to be English about your emotional qualities, meditation is not the right thing. It will surface that stuff. Because all it is is an awareness of what is present AND hidden, in the mind, in the body. That is the reason guided meditations remind us of why other people could be affected by this voluntary blindfold. They certainly were in my case. After initially having an easy time shutting my mind off (because I had been doing it non-stop since July), I realized it was this exact motion that would bring about the change.

Now I am actively seeking change in my meditation. I am trying to learn about emotions before they arise - and consequently, how to direct them into a narrative I actually share. My thoughts have taken over in the last few months which I am not surprised about. Analyzing what feelings are present is not a pleasant experience when those feelings are part of recovering from shock and trauma. I have been making the same mistakes in my life over and over again so I fear that my thoughts not changing will have the same effect as my actions not changing. With more fear comes more of a challenge. In fact, I only realized now that I am in fact scared: not of heights, failure or loss (wellll, but ya know) but of failing to find my potential. I know it is there but knowledge is useless to the mind. The mind needs strength, not facts.

In the end, I still feel powerless because I still do not know how to control my emotions and thoughts. I have to rely on other people to point out the right decisions for me because I am not able to make an informed calculation between prudence and emotions. The struggle is to differentiate between when to listen to the mind and when to shut it up. And that, I have not learned. I have a 29-year-old habit of living in my head which has been a good home for me until this summer when my reluctance to acknowledge that I am traumatized manifested in the physical life. I, by no means, have to control the mind, both my head and my life are in no danger, but I owe it to myself to stop lying and confront what is happening which I have watched many people deny themselves. I cannot guarantee that my behavior will never become a problem for me so I want to fix it now before it becomes one. So no, we don't HAVE TO change, work on ourselves and improve our conditions but we cannot guarantee that life won't do it for us. At least I think I am now better prepared if it does.