I never thought it would take me this long to get over the man whom I count as my first love.
The interesting fact about human beings is that we can be highly intelligent and even intellectually superior on so many levels about our personal lives. We try to use our rational logic as much as we can in order to survive in this world. After all, this is all I've been taught in the western educational and training system. Of course, I am now waking up to the fact that we are now making way for emotional andspiritual intelligence. We are recognising that our empathy and our creativity will probably allow us to survive somehow the catastrophic events that we are witnessing daily.
Yet, when it comes to the most soul baring, identity stripping experiences, where does the logic even decide to come in? It arrives and stands besides you, as you agonise and ooze out all sorts of illogical emotions and cuss at the object of your desire when he rejects you.
Yes, I never met the guy in the flesh. So what? I never thought this would happen, falling in love with typed words and photographs on a computer screen. I don't plan on writing an entire novel about it. It's a non-event.
"You fell in love with someone you never met. Ahhhhhh, yes."
I met him online in August 2010 and it only seems that now after writing him two final emails in the last few weeks and my receiving two back (it is a huge reality check for me as to how fundamentally he has changed inside of himself in the last year to be that quick and civil in responding to me). I have real closure. Trouble is, I still never find the inner courage to open up his emails as soon as I see them in my inbox. They always shimmer with his light, his love and his energy and it makes me weep. I still need to build up courage to open them up a few days later.
Once, I remember, it took me two weeks before I somehow was in a neutral space to read his message to me.
I get images flashing through my mind about all the fun he is having with his partner. They travel the world, you see. Business class, you see. Cycling in the lavender fields of Marseilles and snorkeling in the clear turquoise seas somewhere nameless in the world. I HAD asked him where the photos were taken, but he was being his usual secretive self and never answered me that. So I'm guessing the Bahamas or Dominican Republic. The ocean was so clear that his dark, silky hair had made a soft crown all around his head.
My heart softens whenever I think of him and then the grief pours out in tears. For six entire years I have cried over my loss: over what I see as a stolen opportunity, as my never been given a chance to show my light and love in a relationship with someone I actually connected with so deeply.
The tears never seem to want to dry up. Neutrality and even indifference I have prayed for, yet this gullible, softening heart just cannot seem to understand those different opposite states of being.
What really hit my ego, identity or pride was what he wrote in his final email to me last week, "I never thought I would find someone perfect for me, until I met my Mrs."
It really pained me, and I started getting the thoughts back in my head about how ridiculous I was being and about how I was never good enough. To him, he was just stating the facts. For me, it seemed to say a lot about me and my flaws than it did about him and his life.
After a week, I am slightly more settled in my being. Only slightly. I still am weeping massive tears during
adho mukha svasana (downward dog pose) in my yoga. To the point, the mat becomes slippery because it's so wet.
What I have never, ever understood is HOW on EARTH did I fall for someone so hard and deeply, when even I was fully aware we were not at all compatible? He is handsome and has very beautiful, expressive dark brown eyes, but so do a lot of men! His lifestyle is what I label as active, rushed, swanky and luxurious. He wears tuxedos to formal events and when I saw that photo of him at a wedding, something inside of me shuddered. It spoke of conformity and I have been doing my best to break free of that level of artifice in my own self.
I am more of a hippie, constantly seeking inner and thereafter outer freedom. So I eat simply and mostly vegetarian food sitting on the floor. I am constantly seeking my purpose and a way to make my own mark upon the world. I love to travel, we do have that in common. I'd be happy in a Buddhist temple meditating and learning or on a yoga retreat on a delicous beach, he would be trekking or touring somewhere. I also have had certain health issues that have limited my activities and ambitions for the last few years.
He never understood that, and wasn't prepared to take it on as part of his day to day life. I entirely agreed with that, but I never realised it would take me 6 years to recover and even then, not entirely.
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| Memories we keep in a box |
And I asked myself today, "Really, Sukaina, you knew then as you know now that you guys would never be able to be together as partners. All the intense emotions, the complete blankness and inner excavation of your heart and gut that overtook you from 2010 to 2013 - yes, they all happened. He was oblivious to all of it, and had gotten married to his girlfriend by then.
So what is the real issue here?
Why are you still crying over a phantom?"
I had even hit myself on the head with a blunt object until I bled when I found out he had gotten married and never even thought it would be kind to let me know when he had proposed to her. So that this stubborn and ignorant heart would stop loving him and praying for him to come back to me, to give me a chance to at least speak to him and meet him.
But what we must always hold clear is that this human
existence is one that can be extremely trying to us and very confusing.
What people do in one frame of mind is possibly their only recourse at
the time.
We must let people go to the extremes of
what is considered appropriate behaviour at times. Even and especially
ourselves, as judgement doesn't suit the expansion and growth of the
soul. So what was needed at the time for my growth as a person is no
longer required.
At the time, to me he was the perfect person for me. I had never met anyone like him, with whom I could have a proper intelligent conversation. When we spoke, the air sizzled. My heart would beat very quickly, to the point it would physically hurt and cause breathlessness.
But that was then, in 2014. If we put aside the fact that I am yet to find someone with whom I had such a close connection with and if we put aside my current living circumstances that seem to close down on my desire to experience life as I'd like to, what is really going on here?
Why do I feel so lost, as though a part of me will never be replaced unless he is in my life somehow, in any limited capacity?
And softly, my heart responded.
"You miss yourself, not him. You lost yourself when you met him."
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| Mosaic of my psyche |
I cannot argue with that. I just cannot.
I remember clearly that after he wrote me a few abrupt texts and decided I wasn't worth any more investment of time and energy, that version of me began dying a slow painful death.
Time slowed down and my mental functions slowed down as well. My body began hurting. I couldn't sleep at night. I kept weeping and scenes of my being run over by cars played in my mind constantly, especially when I was walking down the street. I stopped reading the books I had been reading and I stopped drawing
mandalas. I still haven't drawn a mandala in six years, whereas before meeting him I drew them very frequently to help me calm my manic mind and the anxieties.
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| Courtesy Emmanuel Dagher |
The person I was when I first met him and interacted with him is not the person I am now. She was naive and gullible as hell, and very sweet and childish. Extremely introverted, she lived her entire life through her imagination, books and film. She had complicated emotional issues as well and was still very
disassociated from her entire body and being.
She didn't know how to interact with a man in a romantic capacity, since he was the first person to ever show serious interest and she had had a very sheltered upbringing. She was so shy, she told him to wait for a month before they spoke on the phone. And when they spoke, she had become so angry at him because he wasn't replying to her texts as frequently as she would have liked that he hung up on her after five minutes.
The words wouldn't formulate in her mouth. She felt intimidated and scared by him as a result of the intensity of the attraction. It was an effort to pretend to be a regular human being in front of him, when her entire body and mind had fallen in upon themselves.
It was around the time she met him that her
dark night of the soul began, and everything fell apart. I mean, everything. No interests, no life goals, little sleep, little confidence, and the two things she prided herself on: her intelligence and her writing, they all dwindled into nothingness.
She stopped writing, the words wouldn't formulate... and she stopped making sense.
She cried a lot, and sought solace in New Age spirituality. She went to
healing workshops which focussed on clearing past life contracts and relationships and learned that 80% of the energy, beliefs and thoughts in her energy field and pores were not even hers. She learned about
epigenetic research, spiritual cords and how when you are obsessed by someone, it is because of the unhealthy cording in your solar plexus and that the cording is hooked into a core belief that needs healing.
She became even more of an alien to herself.
Her parents couldn't make sense of the new version of her she was becoming and attacked through their words and actions. He friends stayed as long as they could until something about her heaviness put them off so much, they left as well.
The funny thing is, she could see all of this as clear as day. And just couldn't shift it.
Black dog, Winston Churchill used to call it. I called mine Barney, so as to make him ridiculous. I couldn't laugh at it much. Still can't, to be honest.
That was then. She survived the cold, empty, loud nights by buying a battery operated Alan Titchmarsh second hand radio from a local knick knack shop and listening to the inane conversations on
Absolute Radio. The crazy radio presenters really saved her life some nights. They would say something so obscure and ridiculous that she would chuckle into her tear soaked pillow and then be able to sleep.
She would look in the mirror as she forced herself to brush her teeth and just didn't know who was looking back at her.
Was it him?
Was it her?
His voice reverberated in her head, the phrases, the fonts, the laughter... there had been one good conversation. A few very fun and loving online conversations on social media.
His eyes blazed into hers when she closed them at night and she felt her heart sinking and leaking all over again.
She began overeating and developed
a sugar addiction that only recently was diagnosed.
On the bright side, she came across dozens of very creative and healing sad Bollywood and Pakistani Coke Studio songs such as
Chayi Hai Tanhai,
Paimana Bideh and
Neun La Leya to reflect the pain and disintegration of her being. More recently, the first Alan Walker song,
Faded and Umer Farooq's haunting
Keh Na were discovered and soothed her aching soul.
This was all then.
"So, my question again, Sukaina, is why are the tears leaking now, just as forcefully and passionately as they did then?
Have the wounds not yet healed?
Did you re-attach a negative cord back to him out of habit?
Do you have toxic, nuclear levels of karma that just won't be cleared through your prayers and acts of service?
What is it? God, why does the pain not stop? He is just a MAN!
You know he is not a
twin flame. We changed the fabric of the universe and entered a parallel universe whereby he is a soul like all the others you have no link with, to the point you will become indifferent to him. Forget him entirely.
We entered a universe whereby you are back on form with all the advocacy and changes you are to bring to people's lives, in the form that is best for everyone involved. Maybe kids, maybe refugees, and all to do with mental health and consciousness and clearing obstacles to expression. Definitely to do with art, music, writing and creativity to a level you've never experienced before.
So, what's up? Why the tears and the devastation in the heart? Why recreate the exact same feelings and regrets you had six years ago? You have all the pink, green and black crystals you possibly could to heal the heart and clear the cords! You even have the flower remedies to ensure you never repeat the same mistakes! You even became a bona fide
SHAMAN to ensure you could walk your own sacred feminine path to God, and let go of the attachments to this world.
You prayed for relief at the sacred tomb of Jelaluddin Rumi in
Konya, Turkey. And in the Valley of Kings in Luxor, Egypt. (Okay, well I prayed in the swanky hotel I was staying at the spiritual retreat at - we did past clearings then - well, so we said!)
Surely your ego isn't still so massive that you would even entertain the thought that he loved you at some point? Or that you guys had a chance and were somehow sabotaged? Or that him being with the woman of his dreams is somehow an insult to you, since you have had less than ideal experiences with men since him?"
The answer is always so simple.
We have the layers of karmic explanations, and
the karmic debt 16/7 explanations and the Atlantis and
Lemuria explanations... and then there is the practical explanation.
I lost myself when he left. Not BECAUSE he left.
I had lost perhaps 50% of myself before I had met him, then lost another 30% after meeting him and him leaving.... and my connection with my Creator became fragmented.
It still is, which is why he has such an impact upon me. When you make an intimate connection with a person or circumstance that interferes with your God connection, drama ensues.
I still don't read any fiction, which I used to devour with a passion. I don't read any of the New Age books either, unless it is really important, such as looking for an affirmation. I'm reading Matt Kahn's new book
Whatever Arises, Love That: A Love Revolution That Begins With You because I have to write the review of it for this blog and another online magazine, but it's taking me an absurdly long time. I just can't focus too much.
I used to play tennis at university, and stopped since then and even though I have the opportunity to play here, I don't. I go to a few musical and healing or spiritual meditation events here and there, but nothing major. I have stopped running as well!
My flame keeps petering out.... I can't really persuade myself to become passionate about anything in my personal life. In my career and professional life, I have a clearer idea about what I wish to do. I am passionate about helping people, through writing and other means. To enhance lives. To bring about peace and joy and forward progress.
My yoga practice is my mainstay, and even that I have had to cajole myself into keeping up the classes because I know how it is benefiting me on all levels.I also know what happens when I stop going for classes: the cycle repeats itself.
That is basically it.
I do not miss him any longer, there is nothing to miss. We miss memories, we regret actions - and we are in the now. After six years, even someone as nostalgic and romantic as I am has come to terms with the real world.
Maybe I was under some sort of spell I wove expertly for myself. My soul always knew that I had to encounter many illusions and that the pain in their removal will bring about my refreshed and humbled soul.
It is just the realisation that, after reclaiming all my energy back from him, I am still somewhat adrift. I still don't feel whole,
that fragments of my soul and self are somewhere other than inside of me. I still don't have any real plans, any real goals, any real interests that I used to have once, or that other people have.
And it has finally dawned on me that it had nothing to do with him, after all! It really could just have been anyone. The soul lessons are learned through any person fit for the role. It's never really personal in the end.
And so my soul cries and the tears drop onto the blue yoga mat during downward dog for the years wasted in illusions so thick and strong, they felt so very real to me.
I was expecting some sort of happy ending, in the form of friendship at the very least. Instead, he makes a lame joke about us being together next lifetime, and the headache he would experience in having two wives. When I read that, I knew that he was doing his best to be kind and friendly. Yet, there was no depth of connection and no flower of acknowledgement.
I did not appreciate his sense of humour. Two wives. Yes, quite an idea, just what I had been hinting at. Not!Almost as funny as his assumption I had intended to move to Turkey for reasons more insidious than to teach TEFL.
Connection, empathy and acknowledgement: those are the things I have to make available to myself from myself.
I am getting there.
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| Shamanic tools for healing |
There is a theory in shamanic circles that we make ourselves go through trauma, then heal it but not entirely, as within the little scar lays the core of our supreme healing powers. I prefer that perspective to the one I have been telling myself: you're weird and emotionally naive.
I pray the empathy that I have realised through this experience will emanate to everyone who is also dealing with their trauma and wounds. As of now, it hasn't quite been the case as I am the one in need of my own understanding.
I became a character in a Jane Austen novel. The most poorly written one, with social media, emotional health issues, silence, passive aggression and ghosting taking centre stage.
What now?
Who am I without this obsession that took over six years of my life?
How do I redeem myself?
I am who I am. And I most certainly am where I am.
Judgements may flow all though my veins about where I ought to be, and yet, perhaps every single part of this roller-coaster video game is pre-planned before incarnation. My free will lays in my response.
And a response of absolute devotion and gratitude to the divine is needed.
And the response seems to always be love and forgiveness, for self and others.
My ability to be authentic about my weaknesses and flaws and mistakes is a good way to break through my self-made obstacles, in a way. One cannot be a writer if one cannot be willing to expose themselves through the words on the page.
For me, it mainly is to do with feeling all emotions as equally valid, and giving myself the love I have avoided giving to myself for years.
You see,
God is waiting for me to call Him my Beloved.
In the end, God has been the Patient One
(as-Sabur), waiting in the wings for me to accept and acknowledge the love between the exalted Creator and His wonderful creation.
The mystics and dervishes don't go mad for no reason, they have tasted the sublimity of Divine love and nothing else can compare after that.
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| Be noble, for you are made of stardust... |
Come, come, again,
Whoever you are, Come!
Heathen, Fire worshipper or idolatrous,
Come! Come even
If you have broken
Your penitence a hundred times,
Ours is the portal of hope
Come as you are...
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
Let us hope for that for Sukaina. I feel she has taken powerful steps towards the esteemed honour of becoming entirely annihilated and thereafter to be solely in the world and definitely not of it.
In society, but not meant to be like anyone else. In pure service to His creation.
It has been a while since I went to a temple, synagogue or church to devote to the silence. I suppose my soul would like that sort of ritual again.
