www.areluctantnomad.wordpress.com

What enables me to get through a day without it being totally consumed by the kind of anguish and distress that could leave one bedridden, with absolutely no motivation to do anything, and yes, I have been there, those weeks in Mexico had me staying in bed for days on end, well, what enables me to get through a day right now, is that I have to believe that this was meant to be, that I was supposed to know what it is like to have failed in life, that I was never meant to have had it so easy, who was I kidding about all those years in Japan, when I was 'blessed' with free or low rent, enabling me to plan and execute my dream, I was never meant to be somebody who at 39 had said to herself, 'I just know that I will reach my death bed and have zero regrets. How blessed I am!', no, I was never meant to be that person, I was never meant to be that person who had always been so happy, annoyingly so, from first thing in a morning, I was so goddamn positive and happy, I even had strangers send me themed presents based upon the character whose moniker is, 'I Love My Life', no, I was not meant to be happy until death do we part and beyond, that wouldn't have been fair, my 'sun' was destined to burn-out, no longer being 'too much', like his first wife said of me, 'You shine like the sun but far too bright!' I mean, now I understand that 'everybody' goes through heartbreak and the loss of all they have worked for and well, how fake would it have been for me to have gotten through this life with nary a regret nor a sad day, how rotten that would have been compared to the lives of everybody else filled with emotional and financial destruction, so yah, that is what enables me to take these directionless steps, trying to believe that it was all meant to be, that something had to come along to add a little balance to a life that I thought was well-lived and harmless enough, apparently not, it's not good to be happy, to dream, to make dreams come true, to love another deeply, to even moor dreams for that person, nope, it was not enough to wake up each day appreciating a new sunrise, excited for the day, no matter how simple a day it might be, excited for the future, without direction there can be no 'now', believe me, and having no direction is what is killing me, so getting back to the point, no matter how happy you are, no matter how fully you try to live life, how loyally you love, it means fuck all, all it means is that now you have to experience the other end of the life emotional spectrum; sadness, grief, loss, directionless, regret. It wouldn't be fair otherwise. It wouldn't be life otherwise. And that is how I get through each day doing just a little bit more than sleeping this life away, I try to believe that the saying, 'Too much of a good thing' has something to it.

I have lost so much. My life has been destroyed. My freedom destroyed. These were meant to be the best years of the rest of my life. Only I can understand this pain, this anguish, it never leaves, everything reminds me of something, something when I was happy, all the thoughts I would be having in that happy moment, the leaves quivering, I heard so much, I was so in love, giddy, it was all too good to be true. Pop. The bubble burst. Senseless scenery shift. Just sadness. It doesn't seem real. It is going to the complete opposite of how I planned my life. My stomach feels sick when I think about what I have lost. Treading air in a dark room.

Is it good fortune to have been dealt this lethal blow to a life formerly lived? Am I missing something? I try, I try to be logical about it all, I try to turn it into something that makes me want to live again, but it's just not there, it's all gone, and no matter how deeply I wrack my brains to find something worthy to come out of this, to make it worth it, the sacrifice of my life, of my joy, of my love of life, sacrifices too great to 'get over', well, no matter how deeply I try to find a good reason for any of this, I fail to find anything, there is nothing noble to this life of mine now, there is nothing to show for it, there is nothing but sadness and regret.

The location is beautiful. No sound of traffic. Just birds and the steady trickle of mains water, keeping the communal water tank topped up 24/7. A hundred birdsongs. Or more. This place is the perfect retreat for a writer, but saying that, writers come from all over, they are inspired differently, not every writer wants to be in isolation. It is also a perfect retreat for those who want isolation with the benefits of a nice hot shower, comfortable beds, cosy rooms, plenty of space to do yoga or burn some hoops and so on.

My problem was that I could see through everything and I was overly-protective of my world in that I demanded of him total commitment when it became clear that he wasn't at all concerned for my peace of mind each year, having to count days before having to move out again, not talking about shared dreams, well, being protective of all that I had made up until the point that I fell in love made me react to what I saw, what I felt and what I knew. I would call him out. He would deny but his eyes told a different story. And yet I stayed with him, I still loved him as I cycled back and forth to school during that nuclear year, when he'd lovingly filled capsules with kelp powder to help stop my body from absorbing radioactive particles.
Had I just gone with the flow and allowed all sorts to have continued that had nothing to do with cementing our love with a strong, stable shared foundation, then maybe we would still be together, but I don't think so, I couldn't suffer silently, I always told him what was on my mind, hoping that even though I felt ashamed to admit my fears, hoping that he would see that making for a better day might come if he gave me a little bit of closet space and allowed me to unpack as if he meant it, meant that he loved me more than anybody he had ever loved before, but it never came and instead I was made to feel ungrateful, made to feel crazy because of how he continued to live his life with little or no shared communication regarding his true wishes and intents upon getting all his ducks lined up.
I couldn't go with that flow and that was my downfall.
I couldn't ignore what I felt and saw because I do not dance with deceit.
Looking back I clearly loved him far more than he ever loved me.
And that is why he didn't seek to fix the cause of the pain.
I would spin out of control eventually and he could point the finger my way. Groomed to destruct.

It's not even 7am. I went to bed at 6. Knocked myself out with Creep. Woke up. And here we begin another day. One more day of lamentation for a life lost.
I would fill it again if I could.
But I can't.
It's too late to start over.
This is my definition of living in hell.
It's just too late.
It's all gone.
Everything that defined me, my life, everything, every little thing I did, every big thing I did, everything I did, none of it means anything anymore because when I die, I will die sad and that was what I had been avoiding all my life until meeting the man who would take it all from me, heartbeat by heartbeat, yep, I had been avoiding sadness, I lived in happiness, to the point that I had the nerve to say to myself, 'I am so lucky that when I die I will have no regrets'.
I felt blessed to have gotten to 39 years old with no regrets.
Now look.
A life washed up.
I have lost the point to living.

I used to be awake and aware of every single moment of my life. Even sleep, it was special, appreciated. Life was executed perfectly each and every day. Life was simple- I had none of the usual trappings- but my mind was rich with being able to get enjoyment out of the simple things whilst at the same time entertaining dreams to continue this wonderful life but in freedom, as young as I possibly could, not wanting to be like my mother or grandmother, gone before they had 'time' to explore whatever they might have wanted to explore out of this life.

And now.
As soon as I wake up, what comes flooding back to me are all the thousands of moments that I used to wake up LOVING LIFE. Right from the get-go of a morning, I was bouncy, happy, positive, IN THE NOW, and most important of all, appreciating the morning rise of the sun bringing along with it a new day - don't tell me about the now, I practically invented it with the way I lived- the focus I gave to everything I did, from making coffee of a morning, to checking up to four supermarkets in the hunt for the cheapest cabbage, yes, don't tell me about 'the now' because you took me out of that now and put me into yours and expected me to 'relax' when my now still involved the boat - 'why does he keep encouraging me to fix it and to buy things for it'....I took my dream out of the water for our love in March 2008, did he think that meant nothing to me, that he meant nothing to me'.

Jesus Christ, did you hear that Miss Daisy, I hate my life, it has gone from being one of the best lived on the planet taking into account the limited resources I was born with, including intelligence, I am, for sure, a very ordinary person, to this, to waking up in a beautiful ancient cloud forests, the sun bright, so many 'shots' I could take this morning if inspired, and all I can think about is riding my bike of a winter's night in Japan, riding back from school, up the hill, down the hill, past the post office where I would then send some boxes to my new home in Flagstaff, and all the time I was riding that bike with my warm boots on and favourite hat that is far from me now, was, 'this will all be worth it, I will be with the man I love, it has been a nightmare to get to this point, but it will be worth it, we will have many years together and I can finally relax' because I thought that he would eventually marry me, that he had finally seen just how stressful it was to go back and forth into his country, it's no joke crossing borders and entering the US, and then look what happened, this is now Year Four of a great life shattered. I sit here and cry. It's not even 8am. I have lost everything I worked for, I have lost all the joy for life that I was born with. I hate you, Kurt, I hate you for your mind games during those years, keeping me in two worlds, thinking I could cope. I hate you. My life was beautiful and I lived it with a good heart, I did not live it cursing the living daylights out of it, like I ended up doing with you, no, I lived it in full appreciation of each and every minute, of each and every day, and you then sucked that out of me slowly, I said let's not go to Curacao, you said let's go, then you didn't go, then I got on that bus to go to the airport because I didn't want to waste the ticket, it would be a waste of money had I not taken that flight, we would still be together, and this is what I have to live with each and every day, that my need for survival, which goes back many, many years, and the fact that I could not bring myself to waste money, was the downfall of my entire life. I hate my life. I hate this morning. So many hours to go before I can force myself to sleep again.

In other news, I am still in Cayambe-Coca National Park (Andean Highlands Region), established in 1970, this park boasts over 400,000 hectares of paramos and Andean forests in the provinces of Pichincha, Imbabura, Napo, and Sucumbios. This area extends along the eastern flanks of the Andes, ranging from an altitude of 600 meters in the Amazon foothills to 5,790 meters at the top of Mount Cayambe. A group of 60 lakes forms the lacustrine system of Papallacta, known for its wealth of biological diversity. Grasslands, evergreen forests, cloud forests and montane forests make up the vast majority of Cayambe-Coca.

I'm taking care of three dogs and 5 cats. It is isolated but it is all pristine native forest so I am blessed to have experienced this in my life. I remember on Lake Powell, taking Lady Constance from the north to the south of the lake, and we'd tied up for the night down a narrow canyon, we'd fought going down it, our voices echoed, I was so ashamed, but these were the early days of my having arrived and I was feeling really angry still about having had to work that year when I had clearly said I would not go and he had said nothing, although he says he did, but he didn't, he is thinking of before when he said, 'Let's sail your boat!' no, this was after and this is when I told you I would not go. Anyway, living without him was horrible and I would go to bed as early as possible and I had no interest in doing anything but sleep during the hours when I was not working. I was like a hermit, I cut myself off from life because I couldn't enjoy doing things without him, I was insanely jealous of all the things he was doing, I wanted to be with him, this was stupid, this separation, and it need not have happened, but it did, and I angry and  I told him to be gentle the first month or so, not to mention certain things as they would trigger negative emotions in me, but that patience was not there, indeed, I believe he planned to make me angry again, he knew the triggers, but anyway, we were tied up and I spoke about how I wanted to be a hermit, how stupid, I was with the man I loved, but the thing was, I had holed myself away for an entire year, this was me back out in the world again, and being apart from him had messed with my head, I loved him yet I hated him, the pain I had gone through with him from almost the start, anyway, I knew I'd need a few weeks to 'settle' and when life with him again started showing signs that he wasn't being straight with me, it just got worse, I had no time to adjust from being a hermit, to being 'outside' again.

Ironically, my downfall was being overly protective of my financial security and this meant that the choices he made that were hurtful became horribly magnified given what I had sacrificed in order to remain with him, which was to permanently moor my life for the man I loved, regardless of his 'busy' lie in 2008, when I took the boat out of the water in the spring of that year to go and 'earn and pine', I did so because my love for him was bigger than my love for the boat, and so I waited one long year to finally be with him, not to finally return to the boat, and what does he do but plan a solo trip to Panama for 3 months, and this hurt me to the core, for obvious reasons, but what also hurt me was that when we finally did meet up, in June of that year, for me to start the rest of my life with him, it bothered me that I had had to buy two flights, one out to Bangkok and then the one out to the US, - I know this sounds pathetic but I was always aware of what I spent my money on and never, ever wasted what I had earned- when I could have flown directly out to Panama and been with my love, having waited so long for this moment, so when we decided to go back out to Thailand, as I so wanted to show him my world, I thought it would be noble of him to pay for the flight back out there, given that he had ruined the original retirement honeymoon period, when I was so sad and confused over in Thailand, crying in the Pink Room, wondering why my darling chose the Hun, over the girl who had moored her dream and then gone back to work because it was more practical than pining alone in the bay and spending money on going nowhere, and his mother had just gifted him $10000, which he asked me to 'launder' so to speak, wow, looking back at that, he was getting me to do something which he wouldn't do himself, he liked to keep off the banking radar, just like him advising me to buy silver online, when he would never, ever do that himself, and this was way back in 2008, when I had committed my life to him, so even that far back he was showing evidence that he actually had no intention of being with me for the long haul, that indeed, I was right all along, he was using me for sex only when convenient for himself, when he was down in Mexico working on his boat, I am so angry with myself for believing in this man, anyway, back to the point of this post, it was this concern with supporting myself in life that backfired on me in the end, as it magnified, to repeat the word, any hurtful thing he did, and I would have liked him to pay for my flight back out to Asia, as a sign of remorse for the Panama kick to the stomach, but he didn't, and in not doing so, it made me into a little bitch, as during the trip, we were splitting everything, and I was very aware of how much I was spending, and it would have been fine if he had tried to make up for Panama, and for what happened earlier on in the year, when he cheated on me, but he didn't and this ate away inside of me, to the point that I even got pissy with him over an extra coffee, an extra coffee, it probably cost only 50 cents but I was so eaten up with this need to protect everything I had saved for, and the fact that I had moored my dream permanently that was evident in my returning to Japan, I just expected more from him, more commitment, more awareness of who had fallen in love with him and her background, what had enabled this girl to get to where she was, to have the dreams she had attained, I wanted him to understand that I was playing with fire altering my direction after retirement, as everything had been planned assuming that I would be living on my boat, learning how to sail and crossing oceans, eventually being able to charge nominal fees for backpackers who'd like to come aboard for awhile, indeed, over in Malaysia, where I have strong ties to Langkawi Island, there were even local friends there who were interested in doing sunset cruises, yes, I had it all planned out but then I fell in love and took my dream out of the water, it was bigger than a dream, it was my life, it was my means, it was everything I had worked for, and so I was extremely protective of it, which is why, I repeat, I reacted intensely to the many thoughtless decisions he made, and the fact that he never even gave me closet space, he encouraged me to buy silver online, why, why when we were going to be together, why couldn't I have physical, too, he would never not have physical, why wouldn't he take my short-skis back to Flag from Japan, help me move some of my stuff, I was changing my life for him, why wouldn't he take those two light Turkish covers, bought for us so that we could make love upon them in the outdoors, why not, why didn't he ever help me move into his life beyond picking me up from bus stations for 90 day limited love visits or taking me to buy boat parts, which also made me wary, as surely it was clear that I had no intention of continuing with my boat dream, and I knew that he had no intention of ever wanting to have my boat in our inventory, he wanted to buy an Amel, so all the time he was taking me to hardware stores etc, I would be thinking, 'This doesn't feel right' and that was one of many reasons why I could not 'relax' and also why I was acutely aware of my financial situation, because the longer I was with him, the more I would be digging into my original freedom kitty, and if he was going to leave me anyway, well, what the fuck, so this is why I demanded more from him, why what he did for me was 'never enough', it was because the scale of commitment was unbalanced, he made zero changes to his life to be with me, he still had his home base, he still went off to Europe to do his business, yes, he did 'chase my ass around the world' but only because he kept putting distance between us and he'd be heading that way anyway, he must have thought me clueless regarding the Europe trips, albeit I did not think he would cheat on me like he did, but I think he wasn't sure if he could win her, and so stayed with me until it was certain, but in doing so, he destroyed my life and turned me into a monster, going crazy with his lack of bringing me totally into his life, a life where I could have full years with him, not having to leave, I know we could have got round it by leaving together every few months, not really though, the US is really strict about repeat visits, they don't trust you, and I'd already had problems, and he saw how much this stressed me, it really destroyed us, but he didn't care, had he cared, he would have done something about it.
I hate my life. I used to love it. Now I am tainted by failure.
His actions caused me to have to keep one foot in my world, which clearly I was prepared to leave behind in 2007, and this is also a huge factor in the destruction of what had been a great love, but then again, hang on, if it had been a great love, why did it end? It ended because 'Love Is Dangerous'. You say that to somebody when you have no intention of fully inviting them into your world, your life.
I cannot believe all of this happened to me. FUCK!

Sitting on a bench at London Bridge station, waiting for the train to Gatwick after a 10-day flying visit from Mexico to the UK to see my love, $800 rtn from Phoenix, took the bus up there from the boat, flew across, and all because I was madly in love and he had suggested I 'visit my bank to sort out card issues'. It was the last 10 days of his 6 week vacation there and he had nothing to rush back to the US for and as he often told me, 'had so much money he won't be able to spend it in a lifetime', well, I was sad that he didn't pay the few dollars to change his ticket, it would have shown me that he was as madly in love with me, as I was with him, I even chose to fly back on the same day, just so that we might meet the other end, that didn't cross his mind, we arrived at the same time but he didn't seek me out, no, he'd had his fun and was heading back to his world, a world he kept me from via limited 90-day slots, I could never settle, never, and he wondered why I couldn't 'relax' in the end. Anyway, as we sat at the train station, out of the blue he said to me, 'I will always love you, even when it's over'.


I felt like I'd been hit by a train. How could this man talk so casually about love to the woman who had just left her boat in hurricane season, out in the Chubasco-vulnerable bay, and had flown using her Freedom Kitty to be with the man she loved, and here he was talking about how he'd still love her when it was over, and he did say, 'when', not 'if' and I looked at him and said, 'How can you say that, how can you even think about not being with me, this is love, this is special' and he replied, 'Just saying, I could never hate you.'

Well, he does hate me. If ever he saw me again, he'd 'put his fist in my face'. I 'disgust' him. He cannot believe that he ever fell in love with me. And so on.

Anyway, I was thinking about why it all went to shit, on my morning walk to nowhere this morning, was thinking deeply about what flaws I might have to have made this man treat me like he did in the end, why didn't I just get over the things which hurt me and made it hard to 'relax', why am I alone in life, not even my family gives a shit, am I actually a fatally flawed person and did I deserve everything that came to me, and the answer is - no.

Here's my take on me.

I feel that I was born with a very strong sense concerning what is right and what is wrong.
It is the ever-present child in me, my soul untainted by the deceptions that the adult world creates.
There is right and there is wrong and there is always a clear distinction, we always know what is wrong, always.
As a child, and into my teens, it was wrong of my mother to verbally and physically abuse me, and even though I would lie in bed of a morning, crying at the thought of my mother dying one day - I loved her deeply, regardless of her mood swings - there came a day, quite out of the blue, when enough was enough and within minutes I had gotten out of the car with the words, 'Fuck you! I am never coming back!' and that was it, the beginning of a life lived without the support of a loving family base.

I had never sworn at my mother before, indeed, I didn't swear, it didn't 'suit' me, I was actually a child who wouldn't want to do anything wrong, I didn't even steal cigarettes from my mother, like other kids would do, I didn't even smoke behind the sports hall, I was, and still am, a child at heart and those things were wrong.  Anyway, I left home because it wasn't right that my mother took out her personal demons on me, I wanted a chance at life and I wouldn't get that chance if I remained dependant upon mum, we lived too far out in the sticks for me to have done so, indeed, up until that last day of school before final exams started, when I 'ran away' for good, I had been cycling from the house in Marchington to the school bus stop in Needwood, 10kms each way and up and down hills, for months, having grown tired of mum saying things like, 'I'm not your taxi driver!!' and the stress I would feel of a morning having to wake her up in time to get me to the bus stop, she'd more often than not have had a few drinks the day before, she was always in a bad mood and it was just easier if I started to look after myself, and so I cycled instead, on a crappy red Raleigh 14 with small wheels, uh, I hated that bike, I always wanted a Raleigh 17 with big wheels and a basket.

Yep, I had been cycling for months, twenty clicks a day, would leave my bike at Needwood Farm where my school friend lived, yes, for months I had been looking after myself, and then the night before the last day of school, it's a big day, we get to write on the shirts of our friends, mum comes into my room that night and says that she'll drive me to the bus stop tomorrow, I told her that I was fine, that I'd cycle, but she insisted. The following morning it was hard to wake her up, here we go again, and when she finally got up she ranted and raved at me for having not woken her up sooner, and then in the car she went on and on and on about how I was a failure, how I could never do anything right, how all I cared about was make-up and clothes, and well, when she hit me for touching the temperature control thing in the car, that was it, I'd had enough, this was wrong, how she was treating me, her daughter, was very wrong, and even though she was my mother, I did not play with wrong, and never would, and so I left. Just like I should have left him in March 2008, when I the man I loved told me he was busy and then watched me take my dream out of the water.

After leaving home, 3 years later I had successfully entered university, the first person in our family to do so, and after graduation, even though my mother was about to enter a losing battle with cancer, I left the UK and moved to Japan, had we had a better relationship, I would have stayed, but I left, I needed to be able to survive, to support myself, and getting out of the rut that I had landed in upon graduating in a year that had record high numbers of unemployed, where I found myself working in a factory in Salford, packing plant orders made by Sunday magazine readers, was more important than staying with my mother because she was still being mean to me, putting me down whenever she could, and it was just wrong to treat another like that, so I left, and she died whilst I was drinking two pints of Guinness in the old airport in Kuala Lumpur, on July 2nd, 1992. I also think that when my mother left me in the care of a lady called Joy when I was 18-months old until I turned 3, created the survival blueprint in me.

My family, who I had been very close to, especially my uncles and aunts, having lived with both sets, first when I was 8 years old, and then from 16 to 19, when I lived in London and took care of my younger cousins, whilst retaking exams before taking more exams to enter university, well, they pretty much dropped me when mum died, unbelievable really, just when you'd assume that you would be brought closer into the family fold, it wasn't like I had a father for support, nope, suddenly I became the Black Sheep, 'galavanting around the world whilst your mother was sick!' and other suburban myths. Whatever. How they treated me was wrong but I was strong enough to continue to survive with happiness, out there in the big wide world that I loved so very much, so very, very much.

My flaw is being a stickler for what is right and for what is wrong. If you wrong me, I would expect you to change for the better, I would expect you to make it up to me, depending on the gravity of the wrong. If you cheat on me, which is the worst thing anybody can ever do to the person who loves you, who has moored their world for you, then you make up for it by making sure that I feel loved and desired by you, that you are so sorry that you cannot wait to make it up to me, that you are sorry that you lied about being busy for an entire year, that you now realise that my going back to Japan because you were 'busy' was because I was in love with you, my boat dream was over, it was all about you now, and being practical and never secretly tingling with glee that I was dating a millionaire, so I would not longer have to worry about saving money, I went back to WORK to save more money, as it is in my DNA to survive having always had to do so alone, but taking the boat out of the water after all the work I did on it, new rigging, the lot, wasn't because I needed to work again, it was because I was so in love with him, and then he did something very, very wrong, he had sex with another person in my 6th week of returning to Japan, he even wrote about her to his friend, not a mention of me in the email, 'Kak wants me to stay longer, what do you think? I've been partying hard with the Huns, too' - yep, no mention of me, no mention of how he was winding things down so that he could meet me in the summer vacation, nope, and his friend replies, 'You can't go wrong with a Maltese in the bay with her own boat (the woman had read my blog and been inspired to get her own boat, the problem was, she had no savings and in the end she stripped the boat of all its gear, selling it to keep going and having to leave town because she couldn't pay the owners in the end, she was bad all-round, especially for fucking him, she knew how much I loved him, indeed, I had cried when telling her how in love I was with him and then she did this to me, as he too did this to me) and the friend continued, 'Plough on in, buddy!'

Wrong, so very wrong. And wrong of the man I loved to then go off on a solo trip to Panama for three months just when I had attained my freedom from that year of work. And he expected me to get over it, to 'relax' and then made it even worse by inviting the aforementioned buddy and his wife to come and live with us, like really, who was I in his world?

Yes, it is a fatal flaw to have been born with zero tolerance for the hurtful mistakes of others. It is my downfall. I wish I was different, I wish that I had not felt so hurt by that second blow to our love - the first being the 2008 'busy' lie, then the infidelity - but I was hurt and yet I stayed with him and had forgiven him until, that is, the third blow, Panama, it was like a fist in the face, that's for sure, and made me so sad, so very sad, I could not enjoy the leaving party, I could not enjoy my time in Thailand whilst he hung out with the Hun and German chicks on the boat, sailing to San Blas, living it up in Colombia, and he thought that okay, that I would be fine with his plan, that it fit into his definition of 'busy until June'. I wish I was not a person who would become so hurt by such choices of another. But I am. And it killed all the delight in me and turned me into a monster.