I love my friends, in explaining my problems over skype, one friend listened attentively and empathised with me, then gentley asked the question "and what affect will it have on the group if you leave?"
These are the kind of friends we need. The ones who open heartedly accept you and your struggles, and simultaneously help you to expand beyond your limiting views, without antagonising you or negating anything you have previously said to them. It's a blend of kindness and wisdom that is like gold dust. I have missed this whilst on my travels, and also if I am honest, this same question has put a massive spanner in the complexity of nuts and bolts of problems I have built around myself. Part of me wishes she had never asked me that question, but a bigger part of me knows that this question is key to growth, development, transformation.
I may not stay with the team, and if I don't this question will reverberate in my mind, ensuring i leave with integrity, keeping the team in mind, attempting to move towards even as I move away. But it's not going to be an easy task. I already feel a wave of pain in leaving, fear of regret, terror of failure. At the same time, the situation I am in is slowly draining the life from my body. It's like all the red blood cells are slowly drifting towards my extremities and out into the universe, dispersing into the atmosphere. A limp white body remains, shuffling through Varanasi, looking for connection, life, joy.
How much of this is my doing? Is what I always come back to. Am I sabotaging? Or is this feeling a result of the collective dynamic? I look at one friend on Facebook, who is also in India. She is a dancer, with lots of yogi friends, and they all seem to be on same wavelength, they all seem like they understand one another, they all seem like they are having the time of their life. The curse of Facebook! I long for what she has. Connection, understanding, maturity, listening, receiving, giving, kindness, care. Every morning I sit and have breakfast and wonder how I can bring more kindness to this situation. How can I make it work. I resolve to bring my reflections to the team, but as I enter into the team meeting, my belly cramps, my heart beats, my chest tightens. I am a living organism of fear. I cannot be what I want to be.
Fear is consuming. I had not realised, until this trip, how much fear I feel on a daily basis. At home I cycle, dance, teach, meditate, eat my way through this feeling. Building a strong flesh like wall around it, and exercising this muscle, without fail, everyday, so as not to leave room for any slackness, any weakness, any suppleness in which my guise may be felt, seen, experienced.
Perhaps this is a symptom of survivors guilt. Growing up in chaos and turbulence gives rise to a sense of not being able to fully relax into life, not being able to really feel like I deserve a positive, whole, nourishing, fulfilling experience. My parents struggled through my upbringing, so I, quite naturally struggle too. I deeply wish more happiness for my parents, more connection in their life. Feelings of guilt linger as I travel around India, seeing the world, and search for more meaning in my life. And I know that no one can do anything about this, I simply have to feel it, be with it, stay with it, breathe with it. And I don't want to. I want to eat chocolate, drink beer, find a man to kiss, run naked into the Ganges, call people names. I want hugs. I want to feel like I exist more than I already do somehow.
I have felt a need to leave the project for almost a month now. In previous years, I would've upped and left immediately, as a dear friend so rightly pointed out to me, reminding me of my personal progress. At the first signs of injustice, I would've shouted and then swiftly escaped. In enduring difficulty through my younger years I felt trapped, voiceless, unseen. I felt completely void of any power or meaning. At fifteen, I found something within, I stood up and said "NO MORE!" I cannot explain the sense of liberation I felt as I told the adults in my life, I am leaving, I am going, I am looking after myself. I proceeded to live alone, feed myself, get myself to school, smoke cigarettes, explore drugs, revise for my exams, have parties, and go for refuge to teenage love. As a sensitive and lonely 15 year old, hiding behind the "yea, well I don't fucking care" attitude, was incredibly painful. I got twelve GCSE's A-C and I feel a sense of strength and achievement from that part of my life. So, in times of struggle and injustice, my tendancy is to stand up and proclaim "I will not tolerate this!". The fierce independence that I embody, though integral to my survival as a teenager, now lurks in my experience, and confuses me.
So in week 8, I sit here, unwell with a cold and period pain, and feel completely torn about whether to leave the final leg of the project in Darjeeling, and accept that my work here is done. Or do I endure the final month, in the hope that something will arise from this. The biggest part of me doesn't believe that there is any room for change amongst the team I am with. I also know, that as a teenager, my mantra was "it's pointless, they are not going to change". So i have to acknowledge that I hold this view of people, especially in times of turbulence, in times of conflict. I also need to feel autonomy in my life. So at this moment, I consider going to volunteer on an orgainic farm in the Himalayas for the final month of the project, in the hope that I may find more heart there.
I also acknowledge, resistantly, that heart is to be found within.
No comments:
Post a Comment