2023 – PART 1

After a long time I am writing this blog that is deeply personal and an insight as I reflect back on the last 3 years, especially the last 3 years as I turned 50 last month. It’s a huge step for me, it’s 50 goddamn years! It’s a life that has lived so long! Yet I don’t feel 50 and I mean it, because the past 3 years has become such a turning point, it had to be written. Every day to every month since then has become significant.

So here goes ❤️

It was 2023 and I mark that year as a very significant start, a beginning to the end, and an end to what I thought was a beginning. A woman in her late 40s grinding through life and everything constantly moving.

If the few of you know a little about my life, it’s always been about running, “Doing” things constantly, always on the move. Never have I stood and stopped except for an illness, accidents and tragedies and that was a pause too, not a full stop. The moment I got a little energy and juice within myself, I soldered on.

Without going into the background of what I did to what I do, it’s all there like pages in a book in this blog Nyssa where I chronicled my adventures, travels, people I met, to experiences I had , anything that moved and motivated me, I wrote when I could.

This blog I created and started writing at a time when people still read blogs unlike today’s 5 seconds of scrolling.

I stopped abruptly blogging about my travels, and I had a big reason and it had nothing to do with the fact that times were changing.

I had a fantastic travel to Cambodia, Angkor Wat in Oct 2022, spending time with a dear friend in Singapore and the moment I came back, in two days I lost my Saint Bernard girl Bella. GONE, instant in less than 24 hours, it ripped me apart.

How could it not? She saved me from destructing myself by coming into my life as a 2 month old pupper. I lost my mother, my last living immediate family, and being an only child, I experienced what an orphan means. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are, when you lose your parents and are an only child, no one can console you, no one. She came and saved me.

The role of a caretaker comes naturally to me and so I jumped into it, and you know what? All my life I have been just that and I say it with full clarity. In every form of relationship I have done that and toxic habits are hard to let go but not impossible. yes caretaking will get toxic when you put your own care completely aside.

Then came another breakthrough just days before my birthday in 2023. Any relationship that borders on emotional abuse and you keep taking it because you are habituated, because you are ‘alone’, no parents, no siblings, no immediate family so you would rather be in that trap than be alone. But like every rubber band that stretches too much, I was stretched and the band broke HARD.

All I can say is that it was time to disentangle and start moving away from what I thought will be there for LIFE. We humans are fools because no matter what, there is this one thought that comes is maybe this person or this situation will be permanent. And I realised nothing and no one is. My emotions moved and how.

2023 is a breakthrough year in every way because I experienced the kind of helplessness that I never did before. I had a dear person who got hospitalised and in serious condition because of his alcohol abuse for decades and with his family I helplessly watched and took care of what he had become now. A shadow , a skeleton. The toll it takes on the people who do the caretaking is unprecedented. It continues for years..

Who is suffering more is an answer only the people who experience it will know.

I had another very dear person going through a life or death heart transplant happening in another part of the world. So two people who were very dear to me were battling life. So what did I do?

I managed it the only way I have done for decades. Stoic, straight, no tears, not a peep, like a wall, like a pillar while I saw the family of the person I was tending to crumbling to pieces.

The only presence that felt strong and kept me calm was my Labrador dog girl Nora, her quiet strong presence every day when I would come back home tired and alone to an empty house.

Where do I go from here was a question I asked and yet would push it out only focusing on the person who needed that care.

What do you do when you have faced the emotional abuse and temper of a person who drank every night for years and kept a volcano bubbling inside and burst out verbally in the most violent way hurting not only your self esteem, but your very existence?

The ironic part is I didn’t see it as an abuse, not then. As usual I blamed myself for years. But slowly truth comes within the self and faces you.

Do you get angry or do you take care of the person that is sick, who has brought upon this condition onto himself and will take time to recover?

First things first, care was my priority and I did that with no strings attached. Because in my mind and heart I had gone away, slowly and surely far away. The dynamics had changed. I was no longer the person in need of someone. A crutch, a shoulder to lean on, a comfort, all that died slow bit by bit inside, the need was dead, the want was gone.

Why am i writing this, you wonder ?

It is NOT a sob story. It’s very real story happening to so many people, but they don’t wish to see the truth when it glares at them.

We cannot accept what is happening to us or around us,because we are too scared, petrified to face it, the bravado is gone and so does the mask.

I can tell you I couldn’t accept the truth for years but always, karmic destiny happens where eventually it will come and face you with consequences.

But truth can kill you or liberate you. I chose liberation. To go beyond a box, to go beyond a label, to go beyond what society tells you to be, or who to be with, and to keep being in it no matter what. Me? I slowly liberated myself, little by little, slowly as I look back.

Nothing is smooth and never will be. I was and am always used to the rough and tough and what a long journey I have made I tell you. From that over protected only child doted by my loving aging parents, so over protected that I would hold my daddy’s hand when I was 16 to the person I am now.. Yes it’s all circumstantial and yes there is always a choice.

To be Continued…