It’s okay to be alright with being alone

At 26 years old I have just embarked on a new adventure – I have moved to a new country to start a new chapter in my every growing book of life. As an extreme introvert you may find this a strange move, very out of character. Yes, I have to agree with you but it has been something I have wanted to do for a very long time now. I get these ideas and I daydream about them for years without ever taking the steps to put them into action. My life in the UK was good, but thats all it was, just good. I have made choices in the past that are always going to follow me in life and unfortunately in the UK these mistakes are glaringly obvious and restricting. So here I am a fresh expat in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam. I could have chosen any country any city but there was just something about the culture and the people in Vietnam that called to me, made me want to immerse myself.

I believed making the steps to move abroad would be the hardest part of the process but I was wrong. I thought telling my friends and family would be hard because they would worry about my safety, the belongings I would take with me or finding a job. I was sorely mistaken the most prominent conversations I have had however have been about my love life, or lack there of. Now don’t get me wrong I know that the fundamental excistance of humans is to procreate but haven’t we evolved enough to realise that we have a choice, that some of us are not naturally able to fulfil. The worlds population is spiralling out of control and our planet is not equipped to deal with the amount of people that inhabits it. I for one don’t think my one decision to not have children will not extinguish the human population. I am not one of these people that don’t have the desire to have children, I do. I would dream of a family, still do, twin boys and a little girl. But I’ve become a realist. I would want to be able to give my children the life in which I had, the love of two parents who love each other just as much and a means to provide all that they would need. I am not in this position. Therefore, I have dealt with the fact I may not have children.

This being said it does not mean I would shun love away if I found it but I do not want ‘finding a man’ to become all that I am. I started writing this post when I was away in Vietnam, for one reason or another I never posted it. Now I’m picking it back up a 27 year old, just moved back from Vietnam and living back with my parents. This in itself is a challenge and still love is the main topic surrounding my life. I have found a career path that I want to pursue, which brought me home but now ‘they’ believe I will be able to find love too. They want someone to keep me in the UK rather than travelling the world. Should love really be seen as a cage in this way? Are they just wanting to see me settle because that’s what they did? I’m adamant I will not settle but does this mean that I will always searching for something that is not real? Have my ‘book boyfriends’ jaded me?

When do the ideals and the ‘deal-breakers’ turn into pedestals that no-one will be able to reach up to? I like to think of myself as pretty chilled out, laid-back and open to whatever situation comes my way. But is this the attitude to have in love? When everyone is fighting their own battles hiding behind their own masks will love ever be about love, the love you dreamed about as a child or the one you watched blossom in the film at the cinema. Is that love really real or just manufactured to make us always search for the unattainable. I do not want to feel inadequate to the person I sleep next to at night. I’m already inadequate to the person in my head, do I really need reach for more unattainable things.

This brings me back to the title ‘it’s okay to be alright with being alone’. For me being alone is not a bitter concept, its not a phrase I use to hide behind a certain unhappiness. It purely is just how I want to live my life. I like my life, I have goals that I want to achieve, places I want to visit and in a completely selfish way I don’t want to give those dreams up. Maybe if there was someone that wanted to visit those places and believed in the passion I had then I could let them in. But until I really find my match, in all his imperfect form, I don’t want love. Not the love that is pushed on me. I want to the chaos, the darkness and the fearlessness. I do not want to settle because of the pressure that I bestowed on me by those that haven’t walked in my shoes. And for the record – I will not push my views, or judgement on those that have settled, or are still unsure on their feelings for the body that shares their bed. We all fight our own battles, we all have our own scares and burdens to bare. All I want is for people to be content with the devil on their shoulder for their own sakes not for anyone else’s.

Will it ever be possible to let someone else in?

When you’ve had your world destroyed by someone you once believed loved you and you them. How do you find the strength to let someone else in?

I finally feel strong enough to live my life without the constant need to have someone else, someone else to make the circle whole. I believe that I am now happy, happy enough to enjoy life. I am good enough on my own. But with this contentment will I ever be able to let someone share that with me, will I ever let someone else really see all that is ‘me’.

It is not that I believe I need to find love to complete everything. I just want someone to share this experience with now. Someone who can enrich my life and appreciate the joys that I experience in life. Someone that I can trust with all that I am. I thought I was in love before, I believed the promises that he would give me and believed that what I was feeling was how it was meant to be. Now I know that is not the case and I am scared of my judgement. Since my one ‘great’ love I have not let someone close. I have always kept my distance scared of allowing myself to get swept into a similar situation as before. Scared of losing myself completely again.

I am not that girl that I once was, I have more faith and courage in my mind then I once had. However, it is not easy to give those preconceptions up as freely as I would wish. Does this mean I am not as strong as I believe I am? Does this mean I have not learnt from my lessons? Will I ever be able to trust my instincts again? Have they grown with me? Or are they still the naive 19 year old that fell for all the tricks the magician cast?

 

Let the water kiss the shore
Let it take your worries with it when it leaves
Feel the sand between your toes
and the salt on your lips
Feel the wind in your hair
and the sun on your skin
Embrace the ocean and the waves it carries
The mesmerising pull of the tide and the shore

The calming knowledge of the world still turning

Seasons

Leaves are changing, colours are flourishing, taking the pain with them

The wind blows and the leaves scatter, taking the fear with them

The branches are bare, awaiting to be rebuilt

The leaves are returning

Bringing with them a new beginning, a new song, a new promise

She starts to see the colours

New eyes to view the dawn

For she didn’t die in the dark of Winter

She rebuilt and flourished in the light of Spring

Captured

She was wild and free
Always running around in the world of make believe
He wanted to keep her for himself
But that kind of spirit couldn’t be caged
She wilted behind the bars he built
A shadow of the girl she once was
She needs the wind in her hair and the ocean salts on her skin
She broke free and spread her wings
And she soared

The Shadows and me

The seconds turned into minutes and the minutes into hours
And I still longed for the light to fade
The dark was my home, my safe place from the eyes
There was no-one but the moon to confide in
And the mask could be removed
It’s tiring to hide the shadows in the light
The darkness set them free to roam
And with that, I could breath
For I no longer had to pretend
It was just me, the shadows and the demons now

That kind of love

The Ocean and the Shore
The Moon and the Sun
The boy and the girl

The kind of love that for-sees the greatest sacrifices and still manages to prevail.
The ocean will always find it’s way back to the shore despite constantly being pushed away. An unapologetic support that it will always be there even when you keep being pushed away.
The moon will always set to enable the sun to shine in his absence. He would take the dark with him to allow her to shine with no obstacles. He would sacrifice himself to let her flourish. A bittersweet heartbreak.
And then there’s him and her. She looked at him like he hung the moon and he looked at her like she put the stars in the sky. They lived in the dark yet gave each other light to find their way. The kind that defies logic and brings the lost souls together. Bringing the light into the darkest of nights. An unexpected love.

Spread your wings

You’ve got those big blues staring at me
I feel so exposed when your gaze is focused on me
My soul is bare to all that is you
It cannot hide from another that speaks the same
No need to be scared
Your not alone in the hurricane anymore

Spread your wings and fly among the chaos
The darkness doesn’t have to be so dark
Watch the stars shine
Let them light the way
You don’t have to be afraid
You will find the light again

Fearless Bird

The little bird sits in it’s nest waiting for it’s mother to feed him. All big eyes and fluffy feathers. Unable to move more than a couple of inches in fear of falling from the nest so high in the sky. Then one day the little bird just decides he’s ready, ready to leave it’s home and see what else is out there in the big beyond. He climbs to the edge and just steps off. He’s never practised before, doesn’t know if he will fall to the ground or soar above the trees. He doesn’t let the fear take over, it’s just instinct so ingrained in his DNA that fear is not an emotion that he can comprehend. He just steps out. The little bird spreads his wings and lets instinct take over and he soars above it all. He leaves the nest behind and sets upon a new adventure, a new life.

We as humans can learn a lot from these beautiful creatures. We’ve let ourselves believe that fear is a common feeling, something that we use as an excuse to prevent us from stepping off the ledge. Fear shouldn’t be an excuse, it shouldn’t even be a word in our vocabulary. Let’s learn from the little bird, let’s let instinct take over. If we listened to our inner selves more we might even find freedom on the other side of ‘fear’.

Keep me where the light is…

Loneliness – a word so powerful that I believe its impossible to give it only one defining meaning.

There’s the physical type of loneliness where your sat in a room on your own wishing for someone to come and join you. When your wandering the streets striving for the carefree interactions you witness all around you.

There’s the emotional kind – the type ‘they’ write quotes about. Where your standing in the middle of a crowded room feeling like no-one understands you. The type that your mind tries to decipher to understand before the tears start to fall. Your mind building walls to protect you that are inadvertently pushing other people away.

Then there’s the type of loneliness that burrows itself into the soul. The type that has no signs until its worked its way so deep inside you there is no way of letting it go. All you crave is to find another pair of eyes that speak and understand the hurricane within. Someone who might even have the same storm brewing inside of them. The same storm that hits when you realise saying ‘I’m fine’ has no meaning anymore. That there the only words you can bring yourself to say, unaware of the damage they are causing until you don’t see the sun in sight anymore. The darkness has swallowed you whole and now you need to find a way to build a home in the dark.

What most people don’t realise however is that you may live in the dark but it doesn’t mean your life sees nothing of value. There’s a different kind of beauty found in the dark. The stars shine that much brighter here. The darkness sets out a different path and after a while your eyes learn how to adjust. It forces you to look within to become so in tune with yourself, to know your wants and beliefs that soon your not so desperate to hand yourself over to someone else. You understand now that you are enough to create your own happiness.