The life I dreamt

Out of no where it hits me. Grief. Sadness. Disappointment. A loss of hope. All for a life we’ve just missed out on. A property that grew on me. A slow growth where I began to imagine things. A life. The next chapter. A home for now and the future. The tangible middle ground that would take us from being the ever adjusting travellers, finding our feet still (more than a year on), to a couple looking forward to and excited for all that is coming.

I know this feeling will pass and even as I type I remember all we have that I am grateful for. We aren’t homeless; we have family we can live with; I have a new job to start soon. Life actually isn’t too bad.

Sure, it’s not moving at a pace that we hoped for. Sure, since coming home I have felt like this is the road less travelled for me, where city life continues as my mind and body exist within it, but really, I’m still playing catch up.

Sure, my sense of self has changed endlessly and I have moments of never really knowing who I am now, what I keep from the past, what I let go of and what I build. Sure, it’s not been smooth. Or easy. Actually, it’s been pretty fucking hard and sometimes down right overwhelming. But hell, it could’ve been worse right?!

More recently…

I have been feeling the tug of the hamster wheel recently – the one I promised myself I would never get on again, the one I would look at from outside the cadge. But recently I have thought:

Wow. We work to pay off a mortgage that we don’t yet have. So we can provide for the children we dream of. Where does the fun fit in? Where does careless, reckless uninhabited happiness fit? Is it in the day to day or do we need to work harder to build it in?

So it’s been a funny road, this one of (non) property ownership. It’s left me feeling many things along the way and yet I can acknowledge, now it’s prematurely-over, that actually I wanted it. A lot. Even when I thought I didn’t.

Hard dreams

The thing about disappointment and sadness is that it can become so consuming that you can’t see what it’s taught you.

I’ve learnt so much about myself; I have pushed boundaries and confronted fears of the future; as a couple we have worked together, envisioning a future that is yet to happen but excited none the less.

Then sometimes, as I have fought my instinct to be short-termist, it had grabbed my throat and chocked me. Reminded me that deep down I’m frightened. And I didn’t always know what of.

Sometimes it’s because I don’t know how we get to all the things we want without becoming blind to the small things that make life great. How do we stop becoming impatient to rush ahead? What happens to appreciating the now? Can these two realms ever co-exist?

And sometimes, when I feel we’re almost there, I then think, what then? Will we be trapped? Is this it?

And now, as the future we were so close to getting slips from our grasp, I remind myself of all I’ve learnt and been through in this microcosm of life.

And it’s this.

It will all be ok, eventually. Dreams sought easily were never the big ones. The ones you fight yourself to achieve are this ones that grow you. Even if you don’t get them right away.

Mojo&Me xx

 

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Anniversary

Today is our two year wedding anniversary, marking a momentous turning point in our life. Not because of the wedding per say, but for what we promised each other for that year and beyond.

Today also marks a year since we came back from a year long honeymoon, exploring the world and our marriage through a lens of freedom and hopefulness.

You posted a beautiful heartfelt message to me. Things I know you feel because you tell me often. Things that touch my heart and make me grateful for all I have found in you – my partner, my best friend, my soul mate, my other half. 

But my emotion is a private one.

I hide it often behind laughter, hardness, look always and stolen glances; behind a toughened heart, only you have softened and see through to. My expression is overt when I see you and want you close – hand in hand, face to face, an unexpected hug, a playful jump on you. A reassurance that you’re mine. That somehow the universe brought us together and we are one of the lucky ones. At other times it is independent and stubborn – not something I need overtly, sometimes it is shunned as I block out the world and protect myself from forces that are breaking me.

Our wedding was a magical moment in time, but the life we are striving to create, even when things are hard, is what I love you for. The belief that we have in knowing all will be ok, if we face things together. The belief that the road we travel is bumpy, especially as we struggle to find our feet after travel, but we will be ok.

You are my optimism during hard times, when I can’t face another day. Everyday I am amazed that you can love me even with my damaged edges and troubled mind.

My biggest fear is that one day you will realise who I am, how different I am to girl you met all those years ago, how I can no longer match or challenge your ambition or mind.

My spirit to run away and hide is there still, tamed, but when I am scared of life I have to fight the urge to run. You are my reason to fight. You are my reason to stay. You are my reason on many days, to live.

When I see you sad at the thought of loosing me to the devil I have within, I want to get better, for you. So I don’t ever loose you and you don’t ever loose me.

I hope you don’t read this. On day I should be writing you a love note, I have needed to be cathartic about how our anniversary of travel and marriage has built this foray of emotions. Ones of love and hopefulness against the fear and sadness that I am trying to conquer.

This years anniversary will be tinged by being the time I went to the doctors; the time I was advised I needed medication, the time I was referred for further help for an illness not seen, but felt.

I don’t want these things to define this time; I don’t want them to define me.

So if you are reading this, please remember this: today is another beautiful day of our marriage. I love you with a spirit I can’t always express. Look into my eyes and I know you’ll see it. Small hearts dancing in my iris as I look at the man who I will be with for the rest of my life. No matter where it takes us.

I love you for all you are, all you will be and all you give me. You are my reason for being and my inspiration to keep going. On the days I don’t want to wake up, you’re the reason that made me glad I did.

Forever yours,

Mojo&Me xx

 

Mindful in Cambodia

I looked up to the blue sky as the sun was setting and was reminded of the a beautiful moment from my travels.

Cambodia, 2016

We had spent the last two days trekking through the forests, sleeping in hammocks and being scorched by the searing sun on the long walk back to our base in an eco village run by locals.

The experience was tough but brilliant. Our treat was a sunset cruise with dinner the following day. No, no. Not a shipliner. Not even a boat.

As the raft approached us, I could see a local Cambodian women steering it using a stick attached to the motor. I then saw the table.  A little thing we could sit crossed legged under. The simplicity wowed me. It’s everything a sunset cruise should be about. The outdoors. There was no peaking through windows – there was a 360 uninterrupted view.

As we started to sail off – is that the right term? Do you really sail on motorised a raft?! – we were approaching the sunset in the distance. But the view was blocked by cloud. A thunder cloud to be precise.

The views were incredible. We saw lightening through the clouds, rays of light from the sunset peering through while thunder bolts filled our ears. But there was no rain. We we’re going towards where the storm was but not in it.

Then, with our backs to the cloud, we saw behind us the moon was out in a still bright blue sky. The stars eventually joined us. All at the same time as the thunderous sunset in the distance, which alone held my gaze and wonder.

Change happens slowly

I look back and realise how change happens slowly. Without you realising it. I remember getting lost in the sky, thinking, we are so small. I remember thinking that this moment, so early in my travels, was something I would never forget, a sunset like no other.

But today, I realise it wasn’t just a memory I captured. It was the moment. It was one of the first times I really appreciated where I was, what was around me, the gratefulness that filled me was overwhelming as I got lost in the night sky and thought – I don’t want to be anywhere else but here.

As I walk home, I look up at a bright blue sky, and see a sliver of a white moon against it. Nature has a funny way of grounding me to the present. And that, I don’t want to let go of. Just like that memory and just like that moment.

Mojo&Me xx

Same, same, but different

I start a new job next week. Yes! After a soul destroying four month search having come back from traveling for almost a year, I have a job. But there’s been a strange feeling rising in me. I feel the same, but different. Slightly, “same, same but different” – as they say in South East Asia.  

Anyhow, I wrote the below two days before we got back and it’s all I keep thinking about before I start my career again. Will I be the same doing the job I love?  Only time will tell.

_______________________________

3rd October 2016

I’m sitting in Port Elizabeth airport, in South Africa. We’ve spent the last week road tripping the Garden Route. It’s been a blast. I’m waiting for my penultimate flight before I head back to London following a year long honeymoon across 11 different countries. It’s almost over and I’m already thinking about life back home and what it can be. 

Next to me is a lady who’s in my sort of industry by the sounds of things. She’s on the phone talking  about ‘change requests’ to ‘incorporate the newest client requirements’. What they’re doing will improve the customer experience and will increase functionality. All the words are so familiar. But there’s something jarring me. 

It’s not because I haven’t worked in months, or that I’m not curious about the project. Believe me, I eavesdropped long enough to try and find out what the project was or who the client was! No, it’s something else that’s making me feel strange. 

It’s the urgency in her. A familiar urgency. An all consuming urgency. An urgency that makes my heart  beat faster, gets my adrenaline pumping and fires up my passion. 

The only thing is, I realised what it’s like to be outside of the all consuming work bubble which I loved. I realise, as I sit and hear the familiar tone of stress, the fast paced conversations and the urgency of it all, that this project is a big deal. But only really to the people involved. To anyone outside, the world has continued to move in the way it always has. 

I now understand an old boss’s advice. I’m not a heart surgeon and if things go wrong, no one will die. It will all be fine. I want to tell this woman  that. I want to tell her to stop and breath. But deep down I know this woman so well, that I even know the reaction I would get. 

“You don’t get it. You don’t care enough. Well excuse me for wanting to do my best.”

I’m sitting here wondering how I’m going to be when I go home and get back to the career I love. Will that urgent women be the voice in my head, a reminder of all I don’t want to be again? Or will I simply go back to being my version of her. 

I want balance when I’m home. I want to love what I do, without putting so much pressure on myself that I kneel over. I want a life and a career. I want to be kinder to myself and celebrate what I achieve and enjoy the ride. Not just focus on the bits I couldn’t do and what’s next. 

I think I know what my heart is saying, my biggest goal now is making it happen.

Wish me luck.

Mojo&Me xx

Homesick and stuff

I’m not one for stuff. If anything, I have an aversion to the stuff-culture. You know, the culture that says, let me buy one of these things that I don’t really need so I can have stuff. But going to my storage unit yesterday, I felt an strange feeling of belonging to, well, my belongings. I felt homesick.

It’s been 17months since I moved out of my home. The one I bought to feel safe in. The one my partner moved into and made a home with me (even though me and a cat would have struggled in such a small space). We made it work. We made memories, bought storage, fought in Ikea, killed pot plants and dealt with burst water pipes and breezy corridors.

On the day we moved out, I took a moment of mindfulness to thank my flat for all it had given me. A home. A haven. Security. Serenity. I had an attachment to this tiny place in South London that I found hard to articulate.

You see, I was ready for this next chapter – travelling for a year. My stuff being in storage was a relief to me. A part of me wanted to chuck it all out and free myself from anything attached to this old life.

But my stuff wasn’t what I was fond of. It was the bricks and mortar that made our home – the space we had created, the one I started off single in and left married. The one I bought three months before I was made redundant. The one where I entertained friends but could also lock my self away. The one I bought on a whim knowing I couldn’t continue where I was. It was a place no one could take from me. Until, of course I sold it!

I felt a twang in my tummy as we left. My throat felt like it was closing in on itself. I felt stupid. I don’t believe in owning stuff to make you happy and surely my flat is the biggest ‘stuff’ I owned. But what was this twag I felt? I realised, it was loss. It was the closing of a chapter that I knew I had finished, but wanted to keep close to my heart.

Going to the storage unit yesterday, I actually looked at my stuff and remembered things. It had all lived in our home. The stuff I had wanted freedom from, suddenly crowded my mind as it came to life. Pictures on tables, books on shelves, candles lit, artwork hanging. They were reminders of the chapter I had finished and had wanted so badly to move on from.

In the place I now call home, I now feel strangely displaced. We’re living with my in-laws as we get back on our feet having just come back from our travelling adventure.  It’s not that I hate living here, I just suddenly feel that sense of loss all over again. And longing.

I feel nostalgia for the place I once called home. The one I drive past now and see the new owner has taken down my blinds and has a pot plant. Wow. He hasn’t killed the pot plant. I’m envious of the place that still looks like a hovel from the outside, has cracks in the walls inside and a damn patch that could blow the electrics when it rained. I miss the way I felt when I was inside that flat, looking out at it with pride that I did this. I had built a home. I had escaped the life I was living and built a new one. No, it wasn’t perfect (the flat or my life). But it was mine.

I think about all that stuff in storage and want to send a note.

Dear stuff,

You know how I feel about you and your type. I sometimes feel our lives are surrounded by messages that tell us we need you to feel content and happy. Not having bought into that philosophy, I want to tell you something…

Having you in my life did actually make me happy. When I see you now, I remember what you represent and that alone puts a smile on my face.

I can’t guarantee that you will be with me forever but I can promise you this. I will make another home one day that is filled with laughter and love. I will invite you to be part of it. Not as a focal point but as things that will help create the life I want. And as a reminder of where we once were.

I can’t wait to be reunited with you when we can build this next set of memories, together.

Until then, I’m going to remember the fun we had and imagine my future, free from the burden of wanting to run away from you again. For now anyway 🙂

Take care in storage. You’ll be free before you know it.

Mojo&Me xx