Let live & let go.

Getting back to Berlin has been most cleansing.  Not least because I have returned to yoga, cycling & clean eating, as well as sticking to my T-total ways, but also because, I've made peace with myself, in terms of the relationships I have with others.  Namely, men.

After writing my second resolution a few weeks ago, about recognising my ghosts, as if by universal attraction, I found myself immediately afterwards, dealing with exactly that; my relationship ghosts.  Beard was suddenly offering to come visit me in Berlin for my birthday & the Rabbi was being his usual mystical elusive self, both sending me into a frenzy of anxiety & elation, all at the same time.

Just as I was about to be entirely seduced into this destructive behaviour of absorption, I snapped out of the haze, took a step out of the situation, looked at it from another angle & realised, the issue isn't them, or their behaviour towards me, it's my tolerating it that's the problem.  That's when I realised, this was the real ghost & it was this that needed the vanquishing.

In the same sense of recognising that what we seek in others, is really what we need to fulfil within ourselves, equally so, the issues that arise in our relationships with others, are merely representations of our own issues.  We unwittingly project onto others, that which we struggle with ourselves.  So it was time for me to stop questioning their behaviour & take a look at my own.

What was it that I was struggling with, that I felt the need to cast upon them.  Validation would most likely be one thing.  Recognising my own lack of self-worth at times.  Perhaps their lack of commitment.  Yet, I already know what I want, so in essence, why am I not committing to that & instead, expending so much energy & effort into things I know won't satiate me long term.

Communication.  Am I clearly communicating my thoughts & feelings with others.  Maybe not.  Honesty.  Maybe I'm the one not being honest enough with myself about things.  Cracking down on the real issues, made me almost feel stupid that I allowed myself to get so constricted by these seemingly toxic relationships, but equally it completely freed me of them.

Of course some things in life are worth fighting for, but others, well, let's just say, we live it, then we let it go & right now, I'm all for letting go.  Ultimately, the right people come into your life at the right time.  Some stay for a brief interlude & others for the long haul.  Regardless of the duration, you always teach each other something along the way.  I'd like to think, I've finally learnt something & I truly feel as though I'm not haunted anymore.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

— Rumi

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{Resolution 2} Recognise your ghosts.

I think it's a fair assumption that every man & his dog is aware of my search for a bearded partner.  I've made no secret of it, in fact, I haven't even tried to hide it, or throw a little nonchalance its way.  However, lately, as my desire has increased ever more, perhaps brought on by the lethargy of exploring Rome alone, I have come to face a few home truths, which I realise need dealing with, before I'm ready to meet anyone man shaped.

I read somewhere recently, that what we seek in others, we secretly lack within ourselves.  For instance, when you envisage your ideal partner, what qualities do you crave?  Security, nurture, trust, stability.  Now reflect those qualities back on yourself.  Do you feel secure?  Are you lacking in trust, in life, in others, perhaps even in yourself?  Suddenly, you start to realise, it's not someone else you need to feel complete, it's a better relationship with yourself.

Personally, I often lack motivation, confidence, maybe even a little self-love & self-acceptance at times.  But recognising those areas in need of improvement & working on them, means I'm less likely to want to project them onto someone else & let's face it, dependency in a relationship is never healthy, nor attractive & I've dated enough to know that.

Of course, it's not just about being self-sufficient & complete within yourself, a lot of it is recognising your ghosts & stopping them from haunting your future choices.  A classic example here, is my relationship with Beard.  I couldn't think of anyone who, even after dating several people since the demise of our failed romance, still continues to haunt me.

This is probably not aided in the continuation of our friendship.  But, I want to feel as though, if I deal with the issues that bind me to our past relationship trauma, I can reach a stage whereby our friendship works, because I will have actually moved on.  Unfortunately, this seems to be easier said than done.  Eighteen months since things dissolved & there's still something niggling away at my core.

Proof of which came back in February, when I was out with Katie & her Finnish friend, sipping a much needed glass of vino.  A little tipsy, after not drinking for two months, I spotted a guy at another table in the corner & nearly fell off my chair, because he was the spitting image of Beard, minus the tattoos, which was the only way I could tell for sure it wasn't actually him.

Our tables converged & we ended up chatting until five in the morning, his appeal growing with every glass of wine I drank.  A few days later, he came to meet me in Venice & we spent the weekend together.  With the clarity of sobriety & sunlight, I soon realised that this Italian Beard & I were not in any way compatible.  I mentally slapped myself for being drawn in once again by my past.

I think, in terms of relationships, you draw towards you, people that force you to learn something about yourself.  It is the recognition of these lessons & the subsequent learning of them, that releases you from them altogether.  Whether it's about self-expression, trust or co-dependency, the point is never that it ended, but more so what you took from it.

Over two years spent with The Ex certainly taught me a lot about self-expression & self-identity.  Although, it's only fair to point out, that it took me another two years after we broke up, to finally learn those lessons & move on.  Now I keep what we had in my heart, always, but on the surface, I feel nothing but peace & complete detachment.  Will I ever feel like that about Beard.  I can only hope so.

Perhaps it's because I'm nearing thirty, or maybe it's just that I'm tired of opening myself up to the wrong person & getting hurt, but I'd quite like the next guy to be THE guy, not just another lesson.  Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic & maybe there isn't just ONE right person for everyone, but I can't help but idealise the idea of settling down & being with someone for the long haul & raising a family.

As much as I am impossibly impatient, over everything in life, I do see the need to take stock, face up to my ghosts & heal some wounds, before throwing myself back out there.  Because, I think ultimately, once you've learnt what you need to (& of course, to some degree, you never stop learning), you do meet the right person, someone who compliments & balances you & most importantly, you're ready for them.

“The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.”

— Steve Maraboli

N.B.  All photos accompanying my Happiness Project posts will be taken from one of my Pinterest boards, which hosts all the images that make me happy.  Feel free to check it out in the meantime, for more happy snaps.

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Learning the hard way.

Standing in the middle of Zara's flagship store, on Via del Corso, attempting not to cry, after my & Other Stories sandal decided to publicly fall apart, for the second time, despite a recent trip to the repair shop & becoming wearier still, as the sound of heavy rain began to fall outside, it dawned on me the concept of 'living your truths.'  Namely, don't invest in 'false economies' & 'buy quality, last a lifetime'.

Only a few months prior, when I was living comfortably in the Dordogne, had I started to search for the perfect pair of sandals, to replace the now extinct tan pair I had from Kurt Geiger, which were much loved & had seen me through several summers, until their demise in Sicily, just before Christmas.

Having gone through the lesson of owning less & loving more, I took the matter of restocking my wardrobe perhaps a little too seriously.  I admit I suffer from OCD when it comes to, well, everything really & being able to start from scratch on the wardrobe front, meant I wanted to get it right first time, not waste any money.  Plus, without a secure income, I'm even more conscious of how I spend what I do have.

Shopping has a tendency to bring me both elevation & chronic stress.  I have a magpie outlook, anything shiny, gold, overly patterned & colourful & I'm rubbing it gleefully against my cheeks.  However, I hate staring into my closet, bogeyed & overwhelmed by choices, because everything is so mismatched & nothing seems to actually pair together.  The classic tale of a wardrobe full of clothes & nothing to wear.

Hence, I find it far easier to keep to a more compact, capsule wardrobe, which sticks to a strict colour code, namely white, black, grey, nude & of course, my favourite, gold.  Okay, it sounds clinical & maybe even a little drab, but honestly, nothing brings me more joy than a bit of uniform & when everything can be put together, in seemingly endless combinations, it saves both time & tears.

So, back to my search.  There I am in France, spending far too much time perusing the options online & I find myself pinning all my hopes on the tan Ikaria winged leather sandals from Ancient Greek Sandals.  I've wanted a pair for a few years now & yet, have never quite found myself committing to the purchase.

At €150, they're an investment in something handmade & of good quality.  Something I would wear for many years & that would go with everything in my new stripped back capsule wardrobe.  Yet, with the money nestled in my bank account & my finger hovering over the purchase button, I somehow convinced myself that the delivery time was too long & that I would possibly be in Germany by the time they arrived in France.

I left it.  Eventually arriving in Berlin with solely my beaten up black DMs to see me through.  Then the weather got hot & there was no escaping the need to purchase a pair of sandals.  Feeling a little forced & stressed, I searched through all of my favourite stores in Mitte & eventually, after a week or two, decided on the black leather pair in & Other Stories.  At €55, they were less than half the price of the Ancient Greek pair.

I loved them & wore them every day, until of course, they unceremoniously fell apart one evening, when I was alone at Markthalle Nuen, having just bought myself a glass of wine.  Walking around with a floppy sandal, on your lonesome, in a packed out food market is not fun, let me tell you.  I drowned my sorrows, ate a vegan burger, scoffed a scoop of chocolate sorbet & cycled home in the dark, a little wobbly & very annoyed.

I took them back to & Other Stories, only to be told they'd sold out & therefore couldn't replace them.  I'd have refunded them if it weren't for the love I'd by this time invested in them.  So I got a €20 part-refund instead.  Cue one trip to the repair store in Prenzlauer Berg, €7 & several days sweating it out back in my DMs, waiting on them to be ready, followed by a few weeks of wear before the Zara incident occurred.  Lesson learnt: Don't be fooled into false economies.  Buy the shoes!

In the end, I left Zara with a sassy pair of gold block heeled sandals, which I'd been secretly coveting for a little while.  Having been wearing a combination of flat sandals & DMs for over a year, I felt a little wonky at first, but then, getting into the stride of things, I waltzed out of the store, into the rain, feeling pretty damn good & mentally flipping the bird to the world.

Some things don't need a lot of money spent on them of course, but I think, if you're going to choose to have less possessions, it's probably worth spending a little more & really investing in things that are going to last the test of time & not leave you barefoot & teary eyed.  This is a rule that I think applies to everything, whether it be sartorial, dietary or in the home.

Better to spend a little more on organic & fair-trade, than to ingest the rampant pesticides & chemicals of the cheaper non-organic, have your money contribute to the destruction of our environment or indeed to the hardship of people in other parts of the world.  Equally so, better to 'spend out' on a decent set of top quality knives once, that last you your adult life, than to keep shelling out on cheaper ones that fall apart cutting up your potatoes.

Sometimes it's a painful separation between cash & wallet, but you'll thank yourself in a few years time, when you're sitting comfortably on your beaten up Chesterfield, wondering why you ever even contemplated looking in Ikea.  'Buy quality, last a lifetime.'

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