Alive and Awake

My eyes are closed, I am holding my hands in a prayer, and my body is on the floor in a cross-legged position. For a couple of days, I am doing great. I am waking up earlier, meditating, writing in my journal, and doing a short yoga sequence. I am trying. I am giving my best. I want to forgive myself. I want to forget. Even though I know that will never happen. Can you imagine that the best days of my life were, at the same time, the ones that I wish had never happened? You must ask, how is that even possible? I am wondering the same. However, I am living proof that it is possible. I was beyond happy for seven days, and yet, I want to forget those seven days. Those seven days, when I met her, messed with my whole existence. Those seven days almost destroyed my life, while I was the most genuine version of myself ever.

It would be so easy if I could just hate her, that girl who brought chaos into my world, but I cannot. I tried. I really did. After I had survived that seven-day hurricane, I spent many nights in the study room, imagining her face and long black hair, and I was forcing myself to hate her—to hate every piece of her skin and every hair on her body. Then, I would hear her saying sweet words to me. She was someone I had met in a moment of vulnerability, and her words had a profound impact on me.

“Charles, love me. Never stop loving me.”

“Fall in love with me.”

“Stay.”

I would close my eyes, and those words would fly in and out of my thoughts. Any trace of forced hatred would stop. Hate was substituted by an intense feeling of missing. I was missing someone that I had only known for seven days! Did she put the spell on me? Why do I feel like I do? What kind of obsession is this? It’s a feeling that consumes me, that I can’t shake off.

For the first time in my life, I have sought a therapy session. But talking about her made it just worse. I started to have intense dreams. In my dreams, she whispered into my ear to come to her, to find her, and not to give up. Sometimes, I could feel her body in my arms like it was happening for real. Her body was moving under me, her fingernails deep into my skin. I thought I was losing my mind!

When those kinds of thoughts are in your head, and you feel guilt and shame about your actions from the past, but at the same time, you are excited that you feel alive and happy after such a long time, you are enclosed in the circle of confusion and denial. Confusion, because it was so good that you still remember it and sometimes want it to happen again. Denial, because it hurt people in your life, and you pretend some days that it never happened. This struggle with conflicting emotions is a difficult journey.

These days, I find myself in a better place after months of turmoil, tears, and regret. Or months of conflicting emotions. Months of trying to convince myself that all I had felt was a result of good drinks and seductive music. Months of waking up with a smile, having dreamt of her face and her laughter.

To be continued…