I give up.

It’s so hard to go through my day and pretend that I am fine with everything. Okay, so HBan doesn’t want me as a bridesmaid. Why does the end result mean that I have lost an entire group of friends? What happened between HBan and I has no bearing on anyone else, yet everyone is disappearing. Why has Holly walked away too? It’s so hard to feel as though two of three people who were my “best friends” are totally fine with walking away from a friendship that once meant so much. I don’t understand. I’ve tried to keep the friendships together, but they are in tatters. No one asks to see my new place. Now that I’ve moved out, it’s like I’ve moved across the world.

I feel completely alone. Everyone I know has moved forward without me, and are barely bothering to throw a backwards glance. All I want to do is buy a one-way ticket across the world, not tell anyone I’m leaving, and restart life. I suppose that’s a step forward from my old inclination to just end my life, right? Look, we’ve all moved forward.

When I fly to Florida in May for the cruise, perhaps I won’t get on the boat. Maybe I’ll stay in Florida, disappear into the crowd, and never be heard from again.

I don’t know whether I am in love with J or I just want to sleep with him again. At home, when I’m in constant communication with him, I think that I love him. I want nothing more than to be his and have him be mine. But when I lay in my bed here in India, contemplating my heart, I wonder if it’s merely lust. I think about the fact that none of my friends like the way he treats me or any other girl, I remember how hurtful he is when he’s so cavalier with my emotions, and I realize that being with him would be so stupid. Then my insecurity comes out to play, the thoughts about not being attractive enough to ever be able to have him, and I want to give up.

“To have another night with you would most likely complete my soul.”

Hmm.

Since childhood, I have denounced God, organized religion and even spirituality. Although I was raised in a Catholic household, and attended Catholic schools for eighteen years of my life, I knew very early on that I didn’t believe in any of it. I couldn’t fathom the thought of creationism, that we were plunked onto earth by some omnipotent being who lives in the clouds. I did not want to be a part of a religion that is stuck in the dark ages, one that frowns upon sex before marriage, homosexuality, and other realities of modern times. It upset my mom when I told her and started refusing to attend mass on Sundays, and it flabbergasted my teachers when they asked about it. I hated everything about organized religion, wasting an hour and a half of my weekend to listen to an old man indoctrinating people to follow the will of God OR ELSE FACE ETERNAL HELL FIRES. I hated listening to the same old thing year after year, and not seeing any changes at all that addressed society growing and evolving around us. I did enjoy learning about other religions that are followed around the world, but those classes spanned maybe five or six days of my entire kindergarten through grade 12 education.

I resented being forced to listen to the bullshit for so long that I rejected any form of spirituality. No praying, no meditating, no reflections, although I did continue learning (instructing myself) about various religions, especially the ones that seemed especially outlandish, such as Kabbalah and Scientology. I was also angry about being coerced into following many Muslim “rules” when I dated A. My biggest point of contention with religion was that it seemed to me that the ideals and beliefs of religious people were always thrust upon people who didn’t want to hear it. I also disagreed completely with the notion of a deity, someone who has determined how my life will turn out without me having any say in it at all. I believe that I make my own fate, and I refuse to accept that anyone else has any determination over it.

Since I turned 21 and started traveling, I began doing a lot of introspection and self-reflection. It started me on a path of pursuing knowledge about meditation and religions that were focused less on the concept of God and more on the concept of being a good person, of being a positive spirit and caring for the world, and being grateful for what you have. I have been reading a lot about Eastern religions, especially Buddhism. I love the idea of the entire thing, doing good and receiving good, taking pleasure from simple things, the whole “middle road” ideal of moderation, everything about it. Hinduism is also interesting me, the thought of dharma, karma and going through life and death in cycles until the soul reaches liberation, and freedom from the pain and suffering that life on earth delivers… It’s all fantastic.

I am leaving in eight days for India, where I will be traveling around for five weeks. The first few weeks will be with university, staying at an ashram (an orphanage where the kids live their entire lives there and don’t get adopted out), as well as staying at a university out there for a week or so. After the school portion, I will be going around India on my own, first to Corbett national park for a safari to see wild animals, then up to Dharamsala to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama teach about Buddhism to the public, then flying to Goa to do some scuba diving (I can’t go to a new place and not enter a new ocean for the first time!). I am so stoked that this is all falling together finally, for weeks I have been stressed and panicked after my original travel plans fell through. Now, I am even more excited than I was before. The opportunity to see the Dalai Lama, diving in a new ocean and spotting wild elephants and tigers, it will all be amazing.

In preparation for this course, I have been taking a couple International Community Development courses, and have had the privilege of listening to some very enlightening guest speakers. Yesterday, I had my first smudge ceremony with a Medicine Trail Coordinator who works with the Iniskim Centre at my university. It is a cleansing ceremony performed by natives communities, but it dates back to ancient Greece. Basically, he combined a few different traditional medicinal plants (including sage, cedar, sweet grass and tobacco) in a special shell bowl, said a prayer, and lit it. He then went around the circle to each of us, and fanned the smoke with a blessed eagle feather, and we each “bathed” ourselves in the smoke, focusing on our eyes, ears, mouths and hearts, cleansing them. I was very grateful to be a part of it, since I have never experienced anything like that. I love seeing and partaking in new things, and this was no exception.

We also did a meditation in an attempt to find our “spirit animal.” Now, I am the world’s biggest skeptic, and a lot of the new age crap is (to me) exactly that, crap. That being said, I will try anything once. (Well, almost anything. I’m sorry, but I will never be convinced that crystals have any power to them. They are simply pretty gems and rocks that sparkle and are nice to look at. I also don’t support exorcisms, or ghosts or demonic possessions or anything of the sort. But, I digress…) Anyway, in this meditation, we were guided to visualize ourselves somewhere, and what came to us was reflective of our spirit animal. Some of us were even supposed to see exactly the animal that was our totem, the one that would guide us through our lives.

Well, I ended up in P.E.I., on the beach among the swaying grass that made concentric circles in the sand. I saw a bird, one that not only had the ability to fly and walk on land, but could also swim. It made sense to me, since I am never happy with one thing, I never want to choose between earth, water and sky. Then it came to me. A simple loon. (Insert jokes about me being “loony” and how apt having a loon as a spirit animal is. Ha. Ha.) It took a while to build to that realization, because I wanted my animal to be a whale. I wanted to choose it, and decided on a whale because I love how serene they are, how they glide through their environment effortlessly, but that’s not how spirit animals work. You don’t choose it, it comes to you.

Let me provide a few examples of what having a loon as a spirit animal means:
- “When a Loon shows up as a totem
it is calling you to pay attention to your dreams.
They will be of greater importance.

For those with a Loon totem,
imagination and dreaming abilities are powerful.
Images and visions will be very lifelike
and you must separate the real from the unreal.
Loon will help you seeing the truth.

The Loon awakens the imagination
and reminds us that all hopes, dreams and wishes
can become realities.”

-”With loon as a totem, the imagination and dreaming abilities (while awake or asleep) are powerful. Images and visions will always be very life-like, and the individual may have difficulty separating the real from the unreal.”

- “Communication, Serenity”

- “Loon: Symbolizes peace, tranquility, and generosity. Loyalty and leadership. Brave and courageous. ”

If you know me, you know that I put a lot of merit into dreams, and always have incredibly vivid ones. Dreams can stay with me for days or weeks, and sometimes things in my dreams end up happening in waking life. I have a dream diary, I have a dream catcher from Holly to help ward off the bad dreams that I am sometimes plagued with, and my friends know well how important dreams are to me. I learned all of this after seeing the loon, and it amazed me how fitting it was as my totem animal. I am constantly striving for serenity within my mind, heart and life (though I struggle with it), but the dream aspect of it? Spooky.

Anyway, I have prattled on for 1400 words. I’ll end it here today. Namaste!

For the past few weeks, I have been riddled with anxiety and stress. A lot of it had to do with my impending trip to India, but I have recently realized, it also had a lot to do with a certain influence in my life.

Since January, I have been nursing feelings for Guinness. Feelings of desire, lust, hope, all of it. I wanted him for my own for five months. He has been saying for months that he has wanted to break up with her, and even last week, he told me that he wished he never got back together with her. For once, I thought that meant he wanted to be with me. He kissed me, he has been sending explicit text messages, and he said all the right things. When I asked him where we were headed, he said “I’ll put it to you this way. I was pretty sure I was gonna break up with her, now I’m 50/50 and have zero plans to lead anyone on. Basically, what we’ve been doing is fun, but if you’re banking on something more soon, it’s not realistic at tis point. I don’t think you can blame me for that thought process…” I asked him if I was ever a consideration for him, or if I was making that all up in my head. He replied “Well, the term ‘girlfriend’ did not play a role.”

Being told that what has been happening was just “fun” really hurt. It was really upsetting to be told so blatantly that I was being used for purely sexual reasons, and that he had no feelings for me the way I did for him. Fuck. He never bothered to hear my side of things, find out what my feelings were, nothing. I ended up nearly crying on the phone, telling him not to worry about it. I wanted to spare his feelings, though for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. I guess I just wanted to preserve our friendship, and not push him away like I did with Carbis. I was kicking myself, because if I had just kept my stupid mouth shut, it would have been just fine and we would have kept floating along pleasantly. (It’s like deja vu, seriously. I kicked myself for asking Carbis where we were headed, because the same thing happened.) Since then, I have been walking on egg shells talking to him, desperately trying to figure out a way to convince him not to be weird and to make things go back to the way they were before.

Tonight, I had a conversation with an old friend, as well as with HBan and Brain. It gave me a lot of perspective, and HBan is great at getting the point across as plainly as she can. Brain told me not to bring Guinness around, and HBan told me that I should cut off contact with him. I lamented that I scared him away, and she said “No, you didn’t. You didn’t scare him away, because he was never yours. He was never really there.” We discussed how I had met with an old friend Rick (Badger’s sister’s husband) earlier in the evening, and how he told me that if I ever needed anything, if I had no one to turn to or even if I just wanted to talk, he was there for me. HBan said “For someone who isn’t family, and who isn’t a best friend that you see every day, it’s amazing for him to offer that. He obviously really cares for you. You have surrounded yourself with people who love you deeply, and who aren’t going anywhere. It’s okay if you don’t have Guinness in your life anymore, because we are all here, we all love you and we aren’t going anywhere.” It was amazing to hear. She’s right. I have phenomenal people in my life, yet I work so hard at trying to keep the ones that treat me like shit. What backward thinking! Thank you, HBan, for making me realize that my energies should be going to letting the people in my life know how much I appreciate them, rather than hurting my heart desperately trying to keep poisonous people on the fringes.

My problem is that the more someone I like pushes me away, the more I want to fix the problem and make them like me back. I love the thrill of the chase, but I don’t like being chased back. The challenge keeps me interested, leaves me wanting more. I can’t stand the nice guys that treat me well, I want the ones that treat me like shit. My bad. I concede that I am making poor choices, and my new goal is to focus more on those I love and love me back, rather than those who only want to have their cake and eat it too.

Fancy seeing you around these parts. And seeing me, since I have been M.I.A. for too long. I’ll separate my life into distinct categories, since I am a list-oriented person.

School:
School has been absolutely insane. It always keeps me busy, but for the past two weeks, I have had to stay on campus working through various projects until midnight, and even later if I am lazy and stay hone to work. The big project that I have been working on since January is finally coming together, and will be finished next week. I’m excited to be finished with it, I’ve put in a hell of a lot of effort and I just want it over with. Classes, homework, essays and exams have taken up the majority of my time, but at least it’s worth the sacrifice. My marks have been high, which is my biggest goal. Work hard, do well, excel! Ha.

Work:
I haven’t been working much (three days a week) because of my class schedule, and I have been extremely stressed about money. This summer will be dedicated to debt repayment in the biggest way possible. Gah. I hate even thinking about it. Next topic…

Men:
As per usual, there is always some sort of thing going on in my love-life. I have been missing Carbis, but usually only when certain things remind me of him. It’s getting better. I’m still stuck on Houston, but that has always been chaos unfortunately. More on him later… Working with Guinness (or whatever I named him) has been hard, since every day at school and sometimes even when we don’t have class, we are in close confines working on our giant multimedia project. He is still as tattooed and beautiful as ever, but I have given up on him. I’ve been going on dates with a nice Aussie boy since Greer left back to B.C., but I am not interested in him any longer. He is too nice, too open and upfront and sweet… It’s not challenging enough. More on that also.

Today, my soul and heart are happy.

This past week has been fantastic, filled with friends and fun and meaningful conversation. A good friend of HBan, Brain and Paddon came and spent a few days with us, and after he returned to his home in B.C. yesterday, I felt restored and slightly repaired internally. Greer is hard to describe, because although I’m not very spiritual at all, he is one of those rare people that have an aura so bright, you can’t help but want to be around them. It’s difficult to write this without sounding like I’m smitten and overcome with some new-age philosophy ideals, because that’s not the case. He embodies what I wish I could be, someone who completely goes with the flow and doesn’t worry about plans and structure and the mundane. I think that’s why I’m drawn to him like a magnet, my soul sees how free-spirited his is, and mine wants to learn from his. Greer lives for rock-climbing and snowboarding, not for possessions and money and all the other trappings of Western society. After he took a trip to Africa and saw how people lived there, he returned home and had an extreme reverse-culture shock and sold most of his possessions. He told me that after April 15th, he will have no ties to anyone or any thing. His contract at work will be up for the summer, his lease will end, and he will be able to do whatever he wants, and go wherever he pleases. He seemed so nonchalant at the prospect of these major life changes and the uncertainty surrounding the end of all of his commitments. I couldn’t believe how calm he appeared about everything; because I know that I would be in a full-blown state of panic if I was in that situation. I’m already freaking out about what I will do when I return home from India, in regards to a job and my debt repayment plan. Not only do I feel my soul was drawn to his due to my desire to live a simpler and more relaxed life like the one that he leads, but also because of all of the things we have in common. We have a mutual love and respect for nature, a wanderlust that will never be sated, an appreciation of books and art, and a thirst for knowledge and further enlightenment. The two of us seem to be a wonderful mix of yin and yang, complementary but not exactly the same. It’s rare to find someone who you can connect with on that level, and I love what a sense of contentment it brings. Greer’s spirit is like a feather that softly landed on my soul, gently made a profound impact, and then floated away in an updraft, moving on to the next resting place.

One of the most amazing aspects of all of this is that although it was amazing to have Greer’s presence in our lives for those few days, I’m not distraught over his departure last night. These are not the words of a love-sick girl hoping for a miracle to occur (i.e. a relationship), although I think that we would be an interesting fit as a couple. I feel as though this connection was deeper than one on a physical level, but different from the psychological one that attaches me to someone like Spanish moss clinging to trees. I am at peace internally, which hasn’t been the case for three months. Now that I know that there are connections with men that can be much more meaningful than a physical attraction or a desire to be in a relationship, I feel like I’m calmer. There are people out there that feel the way I do about so many things, people that draw me to their spirit with a siren’s call. He gave me a long goodbye kiss before walking out the door for who knows how long, and rather than feel immediate sadness and loss like I have a history of doing, I was just happy. Goodbye kisses usually make saying goodbye so much harder, but last night, it was saying “See you again soon” rather than goodbye. I can’t put my finger on why this time is so different. Sure, I will miss the calming effect he had on the apartment, the relaxed way he approached life, and I will long for that in times of chaos that will surely pop up soon… It’s weird. Maybe it’s because HBan warned me that even if he and I did hook up, a relationship would never happen. Perhaps I braced myself and my brain ignored a key component of what contributes to my usual yearning for a relationship. Regardless, I feel completely happy with the way things were left.

I have been contemplating something that Holly said in passing one day, months ago. She asked “What makes you think the guy for you is in Calgary? You want to travel around the world; there are so many people you are going to meet in the future.” It has remained in the back of my mind, a seed of thought waiting for the right conditions to grow. It sprouted yesterday into something I contemplated for hours, instead of gave a mental glance at. In a way, it took off pressure that I have placed myself under. So what if I don’t find the man of my dreams in Calgary? Maybe I will find him in Australia when I move there in four years. Maybe I will meet him tomorrow at the Farmer’s Market. Maybe I will meet him in India when I explore the country and myself. Why worry about it? He will come, when my life is ready for it. Until then, I just want to enjoy myself as much as possible. I may be single, but I am surrounded by amazing people every day. I would love to find a guy to date, but it will happen eventually. (I say this now, but I’m sure pretty soon I will panic and go back to berating myself for not having a boyfriend. Oh well.)

All I know, and care about currently, is that I am content and I’m in a good place. For today, that’s more than enough.

I had a dream last night that Holly, HBan, and a few other people were all on a beach somewhere, soaking up the sun and having a wonderful time. Everyone was engaged but me, but the engagements were really light-hearted and not too serious.

When I looked to my left, I saw Carbis on one knee on a red blanket in front of me. He said “Ashley, if we’re both single in five years, will you marry me? I’ll give you a puppy.”

It was actually a pretty great proposal, because in my dream I was omnipotent and knew that he was accommodating the completion of my degree and my year in Australia with PLFB. Of course, I said yes.

Then a little time passed in the day and I was headed somewhere, but Houston intervened and pulled me for a walk down the beach, saying how much of a douche Carbis was for not wanting to marry me earlier. “What do you care?” I asked lightly, because I wasn’t letting Houston bring me down off of my quiet internal thrill over the proposal. He acted strangely and hinted that I should be with him, and…

Then I woke up. I hate that!

I forgot to write about this last week, but it is stuck in my head.

I was at the local farmer’s market with PLFB, waiting for her to finish geeking out with the dozens of comic books for sale around her.

Suddenly, an old native man in a white leather coat adorned with beads and tassels comes up to me. “Excuse me. I just had to tell you that you are absolutely beautiful. Just glowing.”

I awkwardly stammered a “Thank you,” and waited for him to walk away. Instead, he stared into my eyes with immense intensity, and said “I hope that the love you are hoping and praying for comes into your life soon.”

What do you say to that? A million things went through my head. I replied “Me too…?” and he leaned in and hugged me tightly while whispering “I love you, sweetheart.” I was in such shock that my mind was completely blank. All I could mentally register was how much I hated the smell of death (leather).

He walked away, and I turned to PLFB and we both just stared at one another. “What the actual fuck just happened?” I eventually asked, before we both burst into awkward laughter. She asked me “Should I have intervened there? I feel as though I should have stepped in and stopped that.”

It was such a crazy experience… I mean, looking at it logically a week later, I realize that he could easily have picked a girl out of a crowd and said the same thing to her, and most likely would have known that she was single. I wasn’t wearing a ring, I was there with a girl… Easy enough to ascertain that I’m single.

However, I prefer to think of him as my own personal shaman. When he was staring intensely into my eyes, he was actually looking into my soul, and somehow knew that I was looking for someone to love me. And with the hug he gave me, I am now blessed and will find it soon.

… Right?

Regardless, it was an interesting experience that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

I have been having some wicked migraines lately, but today really topped the cake. I got to work and everything was fine, until suddenly I couldn’t read what was on the computer monitor in my office. I blinked a few times, pushed it farther away from me, and put eye drops in. Nothing helped, and I went to one of the optometrists in my office and asked if he would check my eyes after he finished checking the surgery patients. While I waited, flashes starting appearing in my vision, which made me panic. What the fuck was happening? I went from checking emails to not being able to read, and things around me were coming in flashes.

That’s when the pain of a million knives being stabbed into my brain at once hit. I turned the lights off in my office and put my head on my desk, waiting for the pounding to die down. After forty minutes, it was finally bearable enough to get up and get some extra-strength Tylenol, which dulled the pain enough to get through the rest of the day.

When I got home, I had just finished dinner when my phone buzzed. I stood up quickly to grab it from the kitchen, and fainted. I was only out for a minute or two, but when I realized what happened (and picked myself up off the floor), I got scared. I was meant to go to Holly’s to play some euchre with the group, but I was too shaky to drive safely.

I spoke to my mom, who also suffers from terrible migraines that are sometimes so debilitating that she has to stay home from work and sleep all day. She said she is taking a few different medications to help, and suggested that I call my doctor and set up an appointment. That’s what I will do, and hopefully something helps. I have had to cancel too many plans on account of headaches and migraines to let it go on any longer.