Blue Green

March 2020

Him,
Tall, muscular, tanned, overgrown sandy blonde hair with eyes as blue green as the Thai sea. A blue t-shirt and dewwy skin. Seated across from me in a patio cafe in Phnom Penh.

He speaks,
With emotion and firm urgency..
Undercurrents of excitement and optimism,
With a clashing sense of calm grounding:

“This is it, 
Ground zero. 
You’re here now- 
You got exactly what you wanted. 

You wanted a great undoing. You wanted to take everything you knew your life to be, and to tear it down. You wanted a great undoing of epic proportions, you wanted to taste the aroma of complete dependence on you and you alone. You wanted to come face to face with the pain you housed in your heart, and to run with it to foreign lands. 

You wanted a blank canvas. 
You wanted an adventure. 
You wanted to seek out the guru to help heal your traumas. 
You just didn’t get it how you wanted it to be. 

But it’s here now- your ultimate desire- your great undoing.

So tell me, 
Now that the world has shut down, 
Your dreams now a debt, 
What are you going to do now?
You got what you wanted, you got your great undoing of epic porportions,
What are you doing to do now?”

“Yeah.” I replied with a heavy tone and with a clenched jaw. A one worded answer with the subtle tones that read – “Don’t you know I am well aware of all of this.. I know I have to decide. I’m not stupid. You don’t understand what I’m running from, how dare you even try to inspire me into a choice.”

Emotions I was able to suppress were now being brought to the surface, I felt my cheeks redden and if I stared a moment longer into his bright eyes, I knew tears that I did not want would arise. And if they would, I feared they would never stop.

So I stood up abruptly.. angry and disjointed. My chair making a dramatic grind against the floor, an appropriate tone for the intensity of moment. 

The anger was running through me, 
Not at him.. At “this”.. 
At me. My attachments.  My inability to decide. 
My inability to let me dreams go. My inability to let India go. 

      “Did I really get that close to India only to have to turn around and go home?”
             “Damn…”  

I don’t know what the right answer is, it was all too much to even being to unravel in this moment.
I only know what I felt, what I experienced, what I was running from, and the determination to never feel that vulnerable + defenseless again. 

I walked away from this moment. I had to. 
Not that I had anything to run to. 
Here I was, on foreign land, Cambodia, amidst a global meltdown, amidst a fucking pandemic, 
Staring face to face with a dream from back home- Canada. 
His heart and his words were in the right place,
It was just too much truth to be confronted with.  
I left the guest house, I had to burn off this emotion pulsating in my physical body. 

And he let me. He knew I had lifetimes to decode, he knew even in this worldly state- I was in no need of protection. The type of bond and understanding of one human to another that comes from traveling overseas. Time is so limited, you learn to trust your instincts, you learn how to see the ones with the pure souls and you stay hella close to them, you learn how to tell your deepest darkest secrets, and you learn to trust that everything is going to be okay.. There was no need to explain or apologize to him for an abrupt leaving. He knew. 

I kept walking on streets I didn’t know in a neighbourhood I didn’t belong to, 
The western girl with long messy blonde hair, 
Weaved into a scene of Asian metropolis. 
Tuk tuks, motorcycles and local foot traffic – no other foreigners to be found now. 

I could sense that the world was becoming less safe, but I needed to feel the awe of the golden hour pre sunset hues hitting the cement, the chaos. 

But the scene I was in felt life times apart from the thoughts in my mind-
I felt the carousel of memories replying. 
Forward. Backwards. 
Living it all over again. 
A spiritual runaway.
Memories of Berlin. 
Motorcycles. 
Punk rock tattoos. 
The chronic pain. 
The ultimate relaxation. 
Death. 
Floating. 
Surrender. 
The sea. 
The blue green sea.
The blue green sea and me. 

(Chills ran through my body,
Maybe the answer I left at the sea,
Was the one I needed all along.)