Walking on Memory Lane February 2015

It’s only February but I feel its even middle of the year. I am already exhausted, not really but I already feel my strength strained.

It is a weird strange feeling really. Standing on a crossroad, two paths. Standing there scraping my foot in the gravel. Feeling tense, feeling I got to make a decision. But not like before. Like talking with people, collecting opinions what other minds think and would recommend. What THEY think is right, what THEY think is the best option or the easiest way or solution.

I feel that is not ME anymore – anyway I never chose the easiest way out or in. I only chose what I wanted to do. Was never an easy thing to do, never got any approval or encouragement, the opposite. And that is not easy the older you get the more difficult that gets. EVERYBODY wants once at least a WELL DONE or at least one word of approval. Not here. Nope.

With time I started to inhale the ideas, the “you know you are older now time to get serious and stop messing around’ got into my system. Yeah you approach the 40s, “for Gods sake” start calming down now, settle and “shut up”. The last I felt was expected. I settled down, in my sense.

I found a place very similar to the place I lived my whole life…. and was unhappy. I chose unhappiness…again. Same kind of town, same kind of people, same closeness, same attitude and… same rejections. Today I feel I chose my family all over again. Chosing the same place and expecting different outcome. Well…

I suffered, faced a lot, ya a LOT of pain. Four years I lived here. The first two years I fought. Oh man I fought. I thought I opened up, I approached people, offered them contact, a hand, my heart. I never EVER experienced so openly being rejected. Same pain all over again.

Big house which my family was jealous about and me I NEVER felt home as it was SO NOT ME. I felt all over again like an alien. Empty spaces, Darkness started to cover my soul and I stopped. Fighting, opening up and drew back. Back into my four walls, my life with my four cats – thats it! Nothing else. I think you could call that Depression. But I also see the positive side of that time.

Before I firmly believed that without people, without a partner you can't survive.

You GOT to be in a relationship, be in love, be with someone. Without even looking at myself. Who I am, what I feel, what I want. I HAD NO IDEA who Christine is, the woman with the long colourful boho skirts, the eBay obsessed woman with the Cowboy Boots and the funky jewellery. I started to dress like I felt but still that is the outside I had no idea what colour I am inside. Such a difficult lonely time. With loads of tears and blessed long Skype calls to my best friend, my soul sister in Germany.

The town, this little town I live now four years in summer, challenged me to the bones, to my inner soul, taught me, shook me, tossed me…. but above all taught me one lesson. One essential lesson: Being alone. I learnt with every fiber of my soul and mind and body to be with myself. And starting to be my best friend. Well I am still on the learning path to that one but at least to listen to myself, to talk to myself, to take care of myself and to be my friend. And lets be honest, when do we learn? When old patterns, old ways of living do not work anymore. And I felt nothing absolutely nothing worked where I found myself. I felt so lost, so helpless and so alone. Like an alien not belonging and all i wanted was just to belong somewhere. My whole life. And I chose the same place like in my old life where I was rejected before with the desperate longing to belong to something. Well you bet that failed!

I gave up. In all ways imaginable.

And isnt it that if you give up that things come to YOU?

The things which are right for you.

Four years, nearly four years later I am here. Out of the blue you can nearly say, I got a transfer. After having fought so long to get a smaller place, more me. Well I guess I needed these four years very much to find out WHO I am which concludes in WHAT I want for myself without any outside influence. You only can learn who your true soul is if you have NOONE absolutely NOONE influencing you. Well I had that, you can say THAT! So one day opening my american postbox after having put the red flag down and I see that letter. I call it the letter of freedom. A transfer granted. Not only for a smaller place or even a council house which I was so afraid of but in the end would have accepted as well, but for a PLACE OF MY CHOICE! Gratefulness would even be understated. I was feeling…free. Free being able to do my own choices. Being able to put now in practice what I had learnt so painful the last four years.

I think I needed a week or even two to realize what I held in my hands there, to get my feet back on the ground.

Fact is actually really that things fall in place when you let go and open up. Even my landlord, I was so afraid will make problem, even more problems than all the other years, again out of the blue tells me he has already lined up another tenant so lets me out no problem.

And so I start looking. For a place. And the first time without any outside influence but being true to my soul. And isnt it weird. I am scared.

Two forces fighting the battle of their lives. One trying to win over the other, trying to stamp the other down. But I am further down the road already. I feel it. Still scared but not ready to settle for anything less anymore than what I really am. I so clearly feel now what I DO NOT WANT anymore, I can’t actually.

And I saw a place. Tense, very tense and so afraid to open my heart with fear deep inside to make a wrong decision. Fear that I AGAIN feel then like an alien, AGAIN at the wrong place. I feel that I got another chance. From the Universe, the great spirit. To move towards me with the clear message that this is IT, telling me that this is your last chance so think exactly! And I will!

Let the Battle begin, ME I will win THIS TIME, I give it up to the universe. If it thinks I am ready and this is the place then I will follow it.

I feel calm, warm. The path to yourself, to your true self is a still one I believe, no excitement, something silent. And this is how I feel. So I think its good, right?

But I am at the crossroads that is for sure and i feel more and more: I am refusing to settle for anything less than the butterflies of the soul….

I used that phrase before but I really love it and I feel it really represents me these last years, the last year especially.

A deep breath now and… step by step, one foot in front of the other on the path to my soul…..